2025 Edmonton Oilers Prospect Rankings: #5 Beau Akey

Position	Year Drafted	Highest Ranking	Lowest Ranking	2024 Ranking
Right Defence	2nd Rd, 56th Overall, 2023	4th	6th	#2

Akey’s development so far

The 2005-born OHL product grew up in the Kitchener Minor Hockey Association, playing for the Waterloo Wolves up to their U15 team. Being one of the players impacted by COVID-19, he missed his U16 season, but still ended up being drafted 19th overall by the Barrie Colts in the 2021 OHL draft.

From that draft, Akey made the immediate jump to the Barrie Colts for the 2021–22 season. The following year, in his draft-eligible season, the Canadian rearguard posted 47 points across 66 games. Akey also gained a reputation as an offensive-minded puck-moving defender with smooth skating.

This offensive acumen mixed with his mobility made him jump on the radar of NHL scouts, which culminated in him being selected 56th overall by Edmonton at the 2023 NHL draft.

Entering his draft plus one season, the Colts defender was off to a hot start, being a power play quarterback, and generating high-end chances with speed and instinct. A shoulder injury requiring a double shoulder surgery ended his season in November of 2023.

This past season, Akey had to brush off a lot of rink rust and re-find his game. These efforts were impressive enough for the OHL product to be named to Canada’s World Junior roster for the 2025 tournament. This marked Akey’s first appearance on the international stage.

Season	Team	League	Games Played	Goals	Assists	Points
2022-23	Barrie Colts	OHL	66	11	36	47
2023-24	Barrie Colts	OHL	14	4	5	9
2024-25	Barrie Colts	OHL	52	6	26	32
2024-25	Canada	WJC-20	5	0	0	0

This past season with Barrie, Akey averaged around 20:43 of TOI. He played on both special teams units, with 2:04 of power play time per game and 1:49 of penalty kill time per game. The 2023 second-rounder did miss some time this season, too, only appearing in 52 games.

Akey is expected to make the jump to the Bakersfield Condors for the 2025–2026 season, so keep an eye on the 2005-born defender as he adjusts to his rookie season in professional hockey.

Akey’s strengths and weaknesses

Akey plays the game of a shutdown defender with some transitional upside as an activating defender. The 2023 draftee’s game is highlighted by strong skating, compete level, and physicality.

Strengths:

Skating

There’s no doubt about it, Akey is a smooth skater. This is one area where the missed time due to injury had little impact on this past season. Fundamentally, the defender’s skating mechanics, speed, and overall agility make him a force whenever he is on the ice.

Mechanically, the Ontario product shows good skating fundamentals from posture, ankle/lower body flection, and depth. Akey sets up a good skating base that produces a fluid and clean stride, with good stride recovery. All of these mechanics combine to allow Akey the ability to keep pace with the play quite well.

Additionally, Akey’s foundation combines with solid lateral acceleration, crossovers, and power generation to produce top-end speed that Akey often uses to his advantage in quality lane creation and manipulation.

This speed also makes his defensive gap control more effective with effective space management, and his offensive activations even more effective with better space creation.

Last but not least, Akey is an agile skater with good edgework and space creation. This agility makes his pivots in defensive transition look effortless, while adding extra layers of activation that allow him to weave in and out of opposing players.

All of these help make Akey an incredibly effective puck retrieval defender, and this opens up his ability to frequently initiate breakouts for the Colts, to the tune of 4.9 per game.

In short, the Oilers have a speed threat in the form of the 2005-born defender.

Compete/Play Driving

A key has the ability to be a play killer. This aptitude describes his above average compete level with decent enough defensive awareness, quality risk assessment, and a high motor he is an asset on the defensive side of the puck.

This compete level is demonstrated in Akey’s gap control as he implements quality angling, defensive responsibility, strong stick positioning that cuts off passing lanes, and enough risk mitigation by pushing opponents to the outside.

This gap control also blends well with Akey’s hustle, which means he’s rarely out of position, and even when the Colts defender is out of position, his skating can catch him right up. It is also a rarity that Akey is not moving, which hints at an above-average motor and play engagement on both sides of the puck.

In the defensive zone the young defender shows a good willingness to box out opponents, exert defensive/phyiscal pressure, all the while having higher end endurance. There were some nights that Akey would be playing 27 minutes or more.

On the offensive side of the puck, there is rarely a shift that Akey is not pushing the pace. This is done through high-frequency activations that mix well with straightforward passes and exert clean, fast-paced offensive pressure in favour of his team. These activations are the key focal point of Akey’s offensive game, and they are relentless and abundant.

Ultimately, Akey does have solid spatial awareness and uses/creates space in an effective manner in both these transitional activations and zone activations, which hints at some recent growth and stability in the young defender’s offensive instincts.

These offensive instincts paired well with his finishing ability as Akey converted on 12 percent of his scoring chances, despite having a lowly 0.10 goals expected rate.

Physicality

Akey also displays some hard skills in his game, as there is a touch of physicality to everything that he does. From his aforementioned physical pressure exertion to grit and board play, Akey can thrive in the more grittier parts of the game.

The 56th overall pick in 2023 shows clean body positioning and leverage, which pushes opponents to the boards and limits the effectiveness of rush chances against. Akey shows relatively decent outward hitting form with an okay regularity of 0.83 per game, and a distinct board play aptitude.

This board play aptitude also sees plenty of success with the Oilers draftee engaging in 11 puck battles per game throughout the 2024–2025 season, while enjoying a 57% success rate. This ability to engage in board play makes him an effective shutdown defender at the OHL level.

In the defensive zone, Akey also shows intense grit and toughness. This grit means positioning himself in the slot and eating 1.68 shots against per game, while also taking 0.97 hits against a game. This demonstrates a quality team mindset, quality balance, and dedication to absorbing physical pressure

Weaknesses:

The main barriers to Akey’s game remain his offensive senses and overall puck skills.

Senses/Puck Skills

In order for Akey to be more effective at the next level, the young defender needs more growth in the offensive elements of his game. These elements include more effective puck management, offensive awareness, and play creation.

Akey’s missed time has shown some rust when it comes to puck management. Particularly, issues arise around pass selection, control, vision, and pass placement. Fundamentally, elements like his handling, dekes, and hand-eye are around average.

One of the most evident areas which these issues manifest themselves in are Akey’s transition game. In the 2nd rounders transitional game there are major delays to his decision making, and option ID. This was particularly evident on the power play where Akey served as the Colts special teams QB.

These delays hint that there might be concerns around play processing, scanning, and offensive awareness. Other areas that require more growth would be his creativity as a play support and facilitation seemed quite basic.

In terms of play creation, especially in Akey’s sheer frequency of activations, he almost seems to force plays that simply were not there.

The best examples of this play forcing were instances where Akey implemented behind-the-back passes, drop passes, or rush plays to an area where no one was. These types of decisions were relatively frequent and displayed limitations in play anticipation and, ultimately, of his hockey IQ.

All of his lost development time is certainly rearing its head as some of these issues around senses would have been further developed with more game reps, and more offensive poise from said experience.

Shooting remains around average for the young defender as he displays a good mechanical release with a solid weight transfer, leg kick, and okay power. Akey is more of a one-timer threat than in his draft year, as his hand-eye coordination has improved over the years.

Akey’s next steps

Akey looks to make his full-time pro-debut this upcoming 2025–2026 season. Expect this debut to be with the Bakersfield Condors. Akey’s injury created some setbacks in his developmental timeline, and as a result is likely a handful of seasons away from NHL roster spot contention.

The Ontario product will be one of the key names to watch on a younger Condors team coming into this upcoming season. Akey also stands as one of the top defensive prospects for the Oilers pipeline, and that alone commands some attention.

That being said, the Barrie Colts alumni has some elements of his game to iron out, particularly around his senses and puck skills. Akey is a bit behind on his development, no fault of his own, but this does make the Canadian defender a slightly longer-term project than ideal.

NHL ETA: Three Years

Potential: Top four defender if everything goes, but likely ends up a third pairing defender with some special teams usage.

What do you think of Beau Akey?