Montreal Canadiens prospect Owen Beck is no stranger to joining a new team following the World Junior Championship.
The cerebral forward was once again traded after playing for Team Canada at the tournament. This time around he was moved to the Memorial Cup hosts, the Saginaw Spirit.
It’s always risky trading for a high-end prospect in the CHL.
It generally costs the acquiring team a bevy of draft picks, and the players in question rarely spend more than half a season with their new team.
But once in a while, it pays off in a big way, which seems to be the case based on Beck’s first game with the Spirit. The 2022 second-round pick scored two goals and four assists, helping Saginaw cruise to an 11-3 win over the Windsor Spitfires.
It was the type of debut with a new club most players dream about.
In addition to earning six points and being named the first star of the game, Beck won almost 60 percent of his faceoffs. It’s one thing to score six points in your debut, but it’s another entirely to also play a stalwart brand of defence while also being a dominant presence at the dot.
The six-point effort matched Beck’s best-ever single-day performance in the Ontario Hockey League, pushing his season totals to 18 goals and 18 assists in 26 games. He had previously enjoyed a six-point game in 2022-23 with the Mississauga Steelheads last season, though he only scored one goal in that particular game.
Many have doubted Beck’s offensive prowess, but the well-rounded centre has shown time and again that he can produce whenever he’s put in a situation that’s conducive to scoring.
Saginaw will rely on Beck to drive the offence going forward, with his excellent debut serving as the perfect launching point with a team that paid a fairly high fee to acquire the Montreal Canadiens prospect prior to the trade deadline.
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