MONTREAL - Owen Beck’s red-hot start to his professional career is anything but a coincidence.
For as long as he can remember, preparation has been Beck's guiding principle—a lighthouse serving as a beacon of success both as a standout junior hockey player and now as a rookie thriving in the professional ranks.
That unyielding commitment to readiness stems far from the rink. At just 18 years old, the Canadiens prospect earned the Canadian Hockey League’s Scholastic Player of the Year award, maintaining an impressive 94% average in the classroom—a testament to his discipline and dedication, and now a reflection of his young professional career.
Hockey isn’t all that different from solving a math problem or finding the solution to a science experiment, Beck’s two favorite subjects in school. Both demand discipline and preparation, and while the grading scheme is different on the ice, the principle remains the same: enter unfit for the challenge, and you’re likely to fail the test.
But in his first season with the Laval Rocket, not only has Beck passed the test, he’s also aced it. The 6-foot centerman sits near the top of the Canadiens’ AHL affiliate in scoring with 25 points in 37 games this year, while maintaining a plus-9 rating. To add to that, he was tied for fourth in rookie scoring across the minor-league circuit prior to being recalled by the Canadiens on January 19.
“I felt like I was pretty well prepared coming in. I’m playing a 200-foot game and sticking to the details,” said Beck of his early success. “The small things in my game lead to the bigger things, like goals and assists. I think just playing my way and not cheating the game at all benefits me.”
For the now 20-year-old, stats are a natural part of the equation (no surprise, given his academic excellence). Beck admits he keeps an eye on the scoresheet, but he’s quick to point out that numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. His ultimate measure of success? How he feels about his game at the end of the night.
“I think I'm probably one of the best critics of my own game,” explained the Port Hope, ON, native. “You can put up two or three points in a game but still be minus-1 or something, and overall, that's not a good night. So, I think, there’s multiple ways of measuring performance.”
The best of them all? Championships. Beck won three of those over his decorated junior career: an OHL Championship, IIHF World Junior Championship and Memorial Cup. Clearly, the Habs’ 2022 second-round pick knows what it takes to win, and he credits his championship pedigree in junior as a building block for what has come at the next level.
“Those games pick up in pace and they compare to the ones here,” he explained. “Being able to play in tight games—games with elevated pace and physicality—I think that kind of gives you experience coming in and that's what you have to expect every night here.”
Beck’s impressive showing this year is parallel to that of the Rocket’s explosive start to the season. Laval owns a 23-11-2-1 record under new head coach Pascal Vincent and is positioned second in a stacked North Division. The team’s win-loss tally, Beck says, is a product of what’s happening inside the locker room.
“Everybody’s willing to buy in and play a system, and everybody's willing to accept a role as well, which is huge,” he said. “When you get into very loaded teams with a lot of talent, some guys have to sometimes take a bit more of a back seat than they're used to. That doesn't mean they're not helping the team as much as they normally would, it just means their game has to change a little bit. This team’s willingness to do that is huge, and that definitely breeds successful, and possibly championship, teams.”
High praise from a player who, in the last three seasons, is a three-time champion.