Consider him down, but not out.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been more achy than anything for defenceman Beau Akey, who is no stranger to injury early on in his hockey career.<\/p>\n
Dual shoulder surgery in November 2023 interrupted the trajectory the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> expected him to be on after drafting him from the Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockey League in the second round (56th overall) that year. And that wasn\u2019t the last of his injury battles, either.<\/p>\n But the once-top-prospect is looking to get back on track after starting out the season in the ECHL, before getting called up to the Bakersfield Condors of the American Hockey League.<\/p>\n He has two goals and seven assists in 22 AHL games, so far, both goals and three assists of which have come in his past 10 outings, where he\u2019s been plus-9.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019ve missed a lot of hockey with injuries, the one thing we don\u2019t want to do is have people sit. I don\u2019t believe in that,\u201d Condors general manager Keith Gretzky said last week on Oilers Now with Bob Stauffer. \u201cIf you\u2019re young, we want them to play. With Beau, I explained it to him, our plan was for him to go down, play 25 minutes a game, first power play, first PK. Learn the game of playing against men.<\/p>\n \u201cWe called him up because we\u2019ve had so many injuries, (Riley) Stillman getting called up (to Edmonton), he\u2019s held his own. There are nights where you go, \u2018He\u2019s a boy, still.\u2019 To me, that has happened, but I think he does a really good job of skating out of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n Long story short, it\u2019s been a long process to get to this point. And it\u2019s still ongoing.<\/p>\n \u201cNow the big picture, \u2018Is he going to stay in Bakersfield?\u2019 Gretzky said. \u201cWell, we\u2019ve got a lot of guys coming back and we don\u2019t want him sitting all but 10, 12 minutes a game when he could be playing maybe 25. I\u2019ve liked the progression of him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a little raw, he still has to get man-strength. I\u2019m going to present a (training) plan for him for the summer and hope he takes a chance on it. He needs proper training to become a man and grow up. These kids are 20 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n At six-feet, 172 pounds, the native of Waterloo, Ont., Akey still has growing to do. And not just in his game.<\/p>\n \u201cHis physical shape is light. Really light,\u201d said Condors head coach Colin Chaulk. \u201cHe takes his shirt off and that kind of stuff, he\u2019s got a lot of growing to do.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the positive side, he\u2019s got some offensive upside, he can move the puck, he\u2019s got great poise, he\u2019s got good vision, he can shoot the puck, he\u2019s got pretty good feet. He\u2019s just got to grow, he\u2019s got to learn and he\u2019s got to grind. That happens in the American League. And then the player needs to meet the coaching staff and the player-development staff halfway, he\u2019s got to do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless of which league he finds himself assigned at any given time.<\/p>\n \u201cBeau started in Fort Wayne (Komets) this year, the message was you\u2019ve got to go play, and play a lot,\u201d Chaulk said. \u201cHim coming up here, he\u2019s played well.<\/p>\n \u201cThe physical battles, he gets into those and he loses those, but he needs to lose those. And now with him seeing that, it\u2019s the decision to make to learn how to manage those or to break the puck out more. So, control the player\u2019s stick, or get stronger and crosscheck people. The way we coach here, we\u2019re not saying it has to be one way, but you\u2019ve got to do one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s all part of both the learning curve and the growing pains that go with a player working to realize his potential.<\/p>\n And the potential has always been there with Akey.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was probably our best player two Penticton tournaments ago, and then the shoulder injuries paused his development,\u201d Chaulk said of the Oilers rookie camp held in B.C. \u201cThat\u2019s the biggest thing, he\u2019s still got a long way to go as far as just becoming a man and playing a full season in the American league.<\/p>\n \u201cBeau had some success early on and then had some injuries and now he\u2019s getting his first taste of pro hockey every day. It took Dylan Holloway three years, it took (Philip) Broberg three years, that\u2019s why general managers call it an entry-level contract.\u201d<\/p>\n E-mail: gmoddejonge@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n On X: @StarkRavinMod<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters<\/a>.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post, and 13 other Canadian news sites. The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consider him down, but not out. It\u2019s been more achy than anything for defenceman Beau Akey, who is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5125],"tags":[3690,4095,3220,32534,1296,198,146,5300,5,38144,4,24,791],"class_list":["post-406394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton-oilers","tag-american-hockey-league","tag-bakersfield-condors","tag-beau-akey","tag-colin-chaulk","tag-dylan-holloway","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-edmontonoilers","tag-hockey","tag-keith-gretzky","tag-nhl","tag-oilers","tag-ontario-hockey-league"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115891124545398314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}