Truer words have rarely been spoken.
“He knows what he needs to work on,” a scout said about Cole Beaudoin while watching the then-Barrie Colts rookie from his perch in the far corner of Sadlon Arena.
That scout, who works for a Western Conference team after a long run in management at the major junior level, was referring to Beaudoin’s skating.
A year later, and though he’ll never be mistaken for Denis Savard or Yvon Cournoyer, Beaudoin glides around the ice just fine. He also looked smooth making his way to the stage Friday night in Las Vegas after the Utah Hockey Club took him 24th overall at the 2024 NHL Draft.
Twenty-four in 24 has a nice ring to it.
Utah, freshly relocated from Arizona, made a trade to move up to get Beaudoin, a tell-tale sign he was likely to be plucked by another NHL club had the former Coyotes not been proactive.
The selection caps about an 18-month period where Beaudoin started to ascend a steep learning curve. He began to be mentioned as a potential first-rounder around Christmas 2023 and Beaudoin only increased his stock as this past season wore on.
“He told me at the beginning of the year that he wanted to be a first-round pick,” Colts head coach/general manager Marty Williamson explained from Vegas, while rhyming off Beaudoin’s off-ice work-out regimen.
“He put in the work and was (rewarded) … He’s just a fine young man.”
Beaudoin is the first Colts player taken in the first round since the Los Angeles Kings took Brandt Clarke eighth overall three years ago.
A better comparison is when the Philadelphia Flyers selected Tyson Foerster 23rd overall in 2020. Foerster also had to answer questions about his skating in his draft year.
Foerster broke into the NHL late in 2023 and played his first full season with the Flyers in 2023-24. Though he and Beaudoin are different types of players, Foerster’s career arc is a good model to follow.
Beyond Beaudoin’s dogged determination — no player in this year’s draft class grinds away in the gym but also in the dirty areas of the ice like him — his maturation is also a nod to the Colts development model, especially to skating coach Paul Matheson.
Williamson pointed to Beaudoin’s body of work over the past season for the reason Utah acted with such authority to get him.
“When you look at it,” explained Williamson, “gold at (both) U18s, the season he had for us, he’d leave the ice and go work out and then jog (after working out), so, no, I’m not that surprised.”
Williamson was referring to his workhorse centre’s 62 points in his sophomore OHL season and twice winning U18 gold with Team Canada. The first came at the Hlinka-Gretzky tournament last summer and then again this spring at the U18 Worlds, where Beaudoin helped Canada come back on the U.S. in the final to take gold.
Both tournaments took place in Europe, but there is one looming in Ottawa, where Beaudoin grew up, that he could get the call for because that is where this year’s World Junior Championship is taking place.
Frankly, it’s nice to see the Colts now get a real return rather than watching players get drafted and then move elsewhere. Foerster’s time in Barrie was seriously compromised due to the pandemic, but the Colts have had to also endure watching NHL prospects such as Ryan Strome, Brendan Perlini, Ryan Suzuki and Hunter Haight play their best OHL seasons elsewhere.
Keeping elite players around and developing them is part of the reason the Colts have worked themselves into an enviable position. Beaudoin and captain Beau Jelsma give the team two elite forwards who should be one the best one-two punches down the middle in the OHL, though Beaudoin will likely play some on the wing to accommodate Riley Patterson, who is expected to be picked later Saturday.
Kashawn Aitcheson earned a spot on Team Canada this spring and won gold with Beaudoin. As a late-born 2006, Aitcheson enters the draft mix next year, when the process is decentralized.
The Colts should be a clear contender in the Eastern Conference, with the Oshawa Generals perhaps a notch higher. The Generals, of course, knocked off the Colts in the conference quarterfinals in six games this spring.
The Colts, playing as an eighth seed, performed honourably but were ultimately outmanned against a club that included their former captain, Connor Punnett. Two players from that Generals squad, Beckett Sennecke (third) and Ben Danford (32nd), were taken during Friday night’s opening round.
Speaking from Vegas, where he was anticipating at least one more Colt to have his name called on Saturday, Williamson acknowledged the excitement ahead of the 2024-25 season.
“Aitcheson, Patterson, (Bode) Stewart, (Jack) Brauti,” said Williamson, to name just a few of his notable returnees who are all to varying degrees in the draft mix this year and beyond, “… We can’t wait to (get going).”
