Owen Beck got a pleasant surprise Sunday when his phone rang at 11:45 a.m.
It was Laval Rocket head coach Pascal Vincent calling.
“He said: ‘How would you feel about playing for Montreal tonight?’ And I said: ‘Yeah, I think I’d be OK with that,” Beck said with a chuckle in the Canadiens locker room after Sunday night’s 5-4 overtime win over the New York Rangers.
Beck was wondering if he might get a call after Canadiens forward Emil Heineman suffered an upper-body injury Monday in Utah when he was struck by a car as a pedestrian. But the Canadiens decided to wait with Michael Pezzetta replacing Heineman in the lineup for the next three games — a 5-3 win over the Utah Hockey Club on Tuesday, a 3-1 win over the Stars Thursday in Dallas and a 7-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday at the Bell Centre. Pezzetta was given very limited ice time, including 2:58 against the Leafs, before the decision was made to call up Beck.
Beck logged 8:13 of ice time against the Rangers, taking the spot Heineman and then Pezzetta had filled on the fourth line with Jake Evans and Joel Armia. Beck is a natural centreman, but was put at left wing with Evans at centre and Armia on right wing. Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis likes to roll four lines and it was difficult for him to do that with Pezzetta in the lineup.
“I think I’ve played one period on wing in junior when I was a rookie (with the OHL’s Mississauga Steelheads in 2021-22) but it did not last long,” Beck said. “I don’t really think I’ve ever played wing before, but it was OK. It’s a pretty fluid system. Guys read off each other really well in this league whether you’re on the wing or you’re playing down low for the shift based on how you track back (in the defensive zone). Everybody’s got to be able to fill in everywhere, basically. That’s something I’ve learned in the transition to pro and I think it definitely helped me tonight.”
Beck’s transition from junior to pro has been a very smooth one, which isn’t a surprise. In 37 games as an AHL rookie with the Rocket, the 6-foot, 199-pounder has 9-16-25 totals and a plus-9 differential.
A big reason why the Canadiens selected Beck in the second round (33rd overall) of the 2022 NHL Draft was his intelligence.
“Owen Beck is a 200-foot player,” Martin Lapointe, the Canadiens’ co-director of amateur scouting, said after the team drafted him. “Plays the right way. He’s a student of the game. He’s a good student at school. He does good things on the ice. He’s got A’s at school, he does A things on the ice and it reflects on his play.”
Beck was named the CHL’s scholastic player of the year for the 2021-22 after posting 21-30-51 totals in 68 games with the Steelheads, along with a 94 per cent grade average in Grade 12 at Philip Pocock Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga. His grades included 99 per cent in math and data management, 96 per cent in advanced functions, 94 per cent in kinesiology and 93 per cent in chemistry.
St. Louis was confident Beck could make the adjustment from centre to wing and showed faith in the 20-year-old when he had him on the ice with Evans and Armia late in the third period of Sunday’s game with the score tied 4-4.
“We know he’s a responsible player,” St. Louis said after the game. “I know when the puck drops on the faceoff you might start in a position that you’re not familiar with but after that — 3-4 seconds after that — you’re just playing hockey and I think he has the attributes to have an impact on the game on both sides of the puck. I think it’s very important. I think you see how we conduct ourselves on the ice as a group. I feel we’re trying to be hard to play against on both sides and I think he can help that.
“For me, you can’t have enough centremen, guys that can take faceoffs,” St. Louis added. “You can’t have enough centremen on your team. A lot of teams have centremen playing wing. We feel that he knows we know that he can do that.”
Beck is proud — and with good reason — of the way he has been able to transition to the pro game after leading the Saginaw Spirit to the Memorial Cup championship last season and being named tournament MVP.
“The game’s a lot faster (in the AHL), a lot tighter checking and you don’t get the same looks as junior, necessarily,” he said. “But to be able to adapt to that relatively quickly and feel comfortable and get my confidence up early in that league is something I’m pretty proud of and I think that really translated to getting me to this point.”
The Canadiens haven’t told Beck how long he will be sticking around.
“No idea,” he said. “I just got to take it day by day.”
Expect him to have a long future with the Canadiens.