Lean Bean has hockey world on a string
Lightest Canadian in camp part of growing trend toward smaller, quicker D-men
ST. CATHARINES, ONT.— When Team Canada coach Dominique Ducharme talks about Jake Bean, he describes a “new” kind of defenceman. Hurricanes coach Bill Peters calls the Carolina prospect the perfect blue-liner for the “modern” game.
Bean indeed is part of a revolution on defence, reflective of young blueliners making it in the NHL and certainly apropos of the top guns on the back end of Canada’s world junior entry.
Bean, Kale Clague and Dante Fabbro (who were on Canada’s silvermedal team last year) and Victor Mete (a late cut from that squad) are in line to form the core of the defence when the tournament starts on Boxing Day in Buffalo. And they are what a previous generation of hockey watchers might have called “undersized.”
Bean is six-foot-one, Mete fivefoot-10, Clague six-foot, Fabbro sixfoot-one.
“I don’t see our defence as a heavy group,” says chief scout Brad McEwen. “It’s about puck retrieval for them.”
The bias toward size is gone. Defenceman Logan Stanley, the biggest player invited to camp at six-foot-seven, was among the first cuts.
“For my size, I’m strong,” says Bean, at 169 pounds the lightest player on Canada’s roster. “That’s something I’m going to continue to do, get stronger. The way the game is going is kind of suited more for me.”
Bean is a heads-up player in the mould of Flames forward Johnny Gaudreau, whom he follows closely.
“You watch guys like Johnny Gaudreau, he always keeps his head up,” says Bean. “He sees the ice the best out of anybody in the game.”
Though Gaudreau is a forward and Bean a defenceman, the point is the same. Size doesn’t matter nearly as much these days. Speed is the key.
It would have been unheard of as recently as five years ago to have a team with only one defenceman as tall as six-foot-four (Cal Foote).
In the NHL draft last June, six of the nine defencemen taken in the first round were six-foot-one or under. In 2013, only four of the 13 blueliners who went in the first round were shorter than six-foot-one.
“If you’re small and you don’t skate, that might be a problem,” says Ducharme. “The guys we might consider to be smaller, they can move.”
With Carter Hart back in net for a second year, Canada looks strong in goal. The forwards are solid, but not dynamic. But the idea is team speed, and that starts on the blue line.
Up-tempo. Chase the puck carrier, get the puck and go on offence. Players who can do that are the ones McEwen was looking for.
“Skill and hockey sense, a real good thinker, competitive, play the game fast — those are the main qualities,” says McEwen. “The game has changed a little bit. At one time, you try to fit more role-type guys into your lineup. Now it’s about adding skill and high thinkers. It’s so hard to score, you need offence coming from different areas, whether that’s deeper in your lineup or creating offence off your back end.”
That’s where players such as Bean, who has five goals and 22 assists with the Calgary Hitmen, come in.
“The way he plays in transition, the way he skates, his vision. He’s one of those guys who’s a new kind of defenceman that we see in the NHL right now,” says Ducharme. And the Hurricanes are loading up. “(Bean) is high end on the power play, high end moving the puck, real good calmness about him,” says Peters. “Real good disposition. Sees the ice real well. Plays the modern game well . . . If it’s a more scrambly game, it doesn’t quite fit his skill set. He’s got huge hockey sense and was real close to making our team this year. I see him making his debut with us next season for sure.”