VANTAA, Finland — His strength and conditioning coach says “he’s a freak.”
His teammates stop and watch him in the gym. Earlier this season, when the Barrie Colts posted a video of him lifting, NHL teams reached out to ask if it was fake.
In a 2.4-kilometre run in training camp, he beat his nearest teammate by 30 seconds, running a 3:30 pace per kilometre, “very impressive” for a 6-foot-2, 209-pound athlete.
He might be the fittest, strongest player in the 2024 NHL Draft.
He’s also one of its most well-rounded. At year’s end, when the OHL released its annual coaches poll, he was named the Eastern Conference’s hardest worker, top penalty killer, and second-best defensive forward.
Those most familiar with his game insist his production doesn’t even begin to outline his impact on a game.
In his draft year, he scored a respectable 30 goals and 67 points in 73 combined regular season and playoff games, good for second on the Colts in scoring. Last summer, he began as Canada’s 13th forward at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup before climbing up the lineup and registering six points in five games to help lead Canada to a gold medal.
This week, at U18 worlds in Finland, he’s technically listed as the team’s fourth-line centre in lineup charts. He has three points in five games into the semifinals. But he has slotted between the team’s two alternate captains, Malcolm Spence and Carson Wetsch, he’s the first player over the board on the penalty kill or for a late faceoff, and his 16:39 average ice time is second among the team’s forwards behind only captain Porter Martone’s 17:45.
The team’s head coach, Gardiner MacDougall, said he has been “tremendous” and called him one of the team’s key players.
And while he’s projected to be a late-first or second-round pick, he has earned the respect not just of everyone in the OHL — “Big Beaudoin fan,” one OHL GM recently texted — but of everyone with Hockey Canada and everyone else he has worked with along the way.
To a tee, they’re all convinced of one thing: He’s going to be a good NHL player and he’s never going to stop working until that’s accomplished.
Adam Bracken has been training the best athletes in the Ottawa area for 17 years now.
He has worked with NHLers like Ryan Spooner and Paul Byron, among others.
He has never had anyone in his gym, The Fitness Lab, who is “as focussed or as dialled in as (Beaudoin).” That athlete, he insists, “doesn’t really exist.”
“He’s a nut with everything about himself to the point where it’s almost concerning,” Bracken said on a recent phone call, scoffing. “I think he’s said to me ‘I’ve never had a French fry in my life’ and I don’t doubt it.”
In the gym, he’s “not even comparable” to Bracken’s other clients his age. Last summer, he moved him into his pro group, a group that currently includes Spooner and current European pros like Blaine Byron and Nick Petersen, because he needed to be there.
Normally, if he were to go to his pro clients about a just-turned-17-year-old client joining their group, they’d say “f— that, we’ve got work to do.” After his first day, they said, “Who is this kid? What’s this kid’s deal? He’s a man child.”
Said Bracken: “He set the tone for that group. He pushed the pace with every single one of them. He outlifted all of my pro guys. He was faster than them. He outworked all of them. It’s been pretty cool to watch.”
By the end of last offseason, they were all rooting for him and watching him closely as he entered his draft year.
A lot of who he is, he says, comes from where he comes from — and the uncommon but fortunate upbringing he had.
Beaudoin was born in Ottawa but moved at four months old to Sweden and spent the first seven years of his life in Sweden and Switzerland. His dad, Eric, is a retired hockey player turned mortgage broker who won an OHL title, was drafted 92nd by the Lightning in the 1998 NHL Draft, and played in the NHL, AHL and Europe.
His earliest memories are on the ice with his dad in Biel after a playoff series, or playing his minor hockey in the Swiss Alps. He made friends there that he still talks to this day and got called up to play with his older brother’s team (his older brother is now studying to be a paramedic and his younger brother is early in his own hockey career).
Eric was a big, 6-foot-5 winger who forechecked and competed hard and whose work ethic he has tried to emulate. Growing up, he also coached him. At 7, he moved back to Kanata, just outside of Ottawa. As he got older, his dad was hard on him but also his biggest supporter.
During the pandemic, when he wasn’t allowed on the ice, Beaudoin set up a home gym in his basement. (Collin Jennings / Barrie Colts)
Still, though he’s helped by good genetics (his uncle Nic was also drafted by the Avalanche and played in the AHL and ECHL), his strength and fitness level, all those around him insist, has been his own doing.
Bracken will tell you about the time Eric came to him on the Canada Day long weekend to say, “Hey, I know you guys are closed on Monday but Cole really wants to get a workout in and doesn’t want to go to the cottage and miss it, can you tell him that you’re closed and that you can’t train him.”
When he first started working with Beaudoin three and a half years ago, he already had some brute strength, but he didn’t know how to use his body. He had the pre-requisites of a strong kid but he wasn’t a strong athlete. He would crush lifts but when Bracken would put him in a ladder to do some footwork, he was clumsy and he’d step on his toes or miss a square.
During the pandemic, when he wasn’t allowed on the ice, he became obsessive about coming out of it ahead of others his age in that way and built a home gym in his basement, constantly adding new exercise tools to it.
He worked out every day, his strength continuing to take off, but he also started running 3-5 kilometres a day and began working on his mobility, flexibility, relaxation and visualization with the help of his mom, Jackie, a yoga instructor and real estate agent.
“That’s one side of hockey that not a lot of people really think about,” Beaudoin said before a recent playoff game in Barrie, adding that he also did yoga once a week with the Colts. “People just think about the strength side of things, maybe the cardio side of things, but a lot of hockey is the preparation and the mental side of things.”
He fell in love with running and nutrition.
He’s the kid who, when the table orders dessert, will pass. He’s the kid, when a buddy asks him if he wants to golf on a Friday, will answer, “I can golf but I’m training until 11 a.m. so I can golf after there” whereas Bracken’s other clients his age will say, “Hey, I can’t come to the workout Friday because I’m playing a round of golf.”
He became, according to Bracken, a strong and powerful athlete rather than just a strong and powerful kid.
“That’s just not how he rolls,” Bracken explained. “He’s just so dialled in on playing in the NHL and becoming an NHL player. And I think his big thing is that he’s already got that pro mentality ingrained in him at such a young age that you don’t see anywhere else.”
“He’s not worried about looking silly in an attempt to try to get better,” said skills coach Casey Torres. (Collin Jennings / Barrie Colts)
Once players could start getting on the ice in small groups, he got to work with Shelley Kettles’ Perfect Skating and area skills coaches Casey Torres (who is also a former amateur scout for the Penguins and assistant coach with the Hartford Wolf Pack) and Pat Malloy.
In sessions with Torres in nearby Gatineau, Quebec, they were allowed eight players and a goalie and he joined a group of 2005s and 2006s that already included fellow 2024 prospects Henry Mews and Nathan Villeneuve.
Immediately, Torres found him to be “a great kid (and) such a worker.” There were times when he’d show up for a 7 a.m. skate and then Torres would see him on the ice again at 10 a.m.
In front of his eyes, he evolved physically and in his skills, never afraid to be at the front of the line even if they were learning something he wasn’t confident in.
“He’s not worried about looking silly in an attempt to try to get better,” said Torres, who also coached against him as the interim head coach of the Windsor Spitfires this season. “He’s really awesome to have on the ice. He’s a high, high-character kid.”
And it paid off, his skating, edges and puck handling all improving quickly.
“Whatever element of his game you think might need improvement, from what I’ve seen there’s no doubt that it’s going to improve because he loves being on the ice, he works incredibly hard, and naturally everything that he works on is going to improve because he does it with high-end quality,” Torres said.
“And it sounds simple but the pace at which he practices is a skill and not enough people recognize the skill inside of that. When he does a drill or he does a skills session, he’s doing it at full pace, full speed. … Not many people are willing to execute that. So that’s a huge positive for him.”
When hockey returned and restrictions loosened coming out of the pandemic, people were surprised by how big, and strong, and well-conditioned he was — and by how much faster he was.
“I really used that time to my advantage and I came back stronger and faster, which was a huge stepping stone for me,” Beaudoin said.
There’s always another stepping stone for Beaudoin, too. This summer, he has set his sights on continuing to make his hands smoother so that he can beat goalies in tight and become even better around the net.
“I know that when this summer does start back up for training that it’ll just be one level higher,” Bracken said.
“My game’s about the relentlessness and the go-go-go work ethic,” Beaudoin said. (Sam Kim / Barrie Colts)
The first thing Colts head coach and general manager Marty Williamson will always say about Cole Beaudoin is that he’s one of the only players he’s ever had who, at 16 years old, “was ready to do everything for me.”
This year, Williamson named him an alternate captain for that reason.
NHL Central Scouting, who ranked him 31st on their final list of North American skaters, describe him as follows: “Cole is a power forward who plays a reliable two-way game. One of the hardest-working players on the ice on a regular basis. Competitive in puck battles and usually comes away with the puck. Good offensive instincts and deceptive puck skills, has a good shot and can put the puck in the net. Effective utilizing smarts, skills and physical attributes to generate scoring chances. Reliable in the faceoff circle and responsible game without the puck.”
In their skills sessions together, Torres describes his strength as his shot and his confidence in taking pucks to the net and driving.
Now that he has coached against him, he has a different perspective as well. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when he showed up repeatedly in the coaches poll results.
“Coaching against him, he’s a very competitive player, he’s hard to handle because he puts a lot of pressure on your defence, he’s a great penalty killer, and as he continues to grow and evolve and mature he’s going to be a load to handle offensively for the next couple of years in the OHL,” Torres said.
Beaudoin describes him as hard-working, dedicated, determined and resilient. He thinks of himself as a leader, too.
“My game’s about the relentlessness and the go-go-go work ethic,” Beaudoin said. “I’m that up-and-down 200-foot centreman who is reliable in the D-zone but then can create offence from his teammates, for himself, and can score goals.”
In Finland, MacDougall has only had praise — and more shifts — to give him.
“He’s a big body, he wins a lot of pucks, he’s very responsible, obviously he’s been outstanding on the penalty kill but he’s been outstanding with those momentum shifts after they score or if you have to score,” MacDougall said. “His line does a really good job with puck possession and getting it deep. He’s got a great work ethic, he’s hard to play against. I think he’s been one of our key players for us.”
His roommate for the tournament, 16-year-old sensation Gavin McKenna, said he plays the way you want and credited him for his big shot blocks, work ethic, and overall skill.
As for what he looks like…
“Oh yeah!” McKenna said, laughing about his physique. “I probably wouldn’t want to go up against that guy in the gym.”
With reporting in Barrie, Ont.
(Top photo: Sam Kim / Barrie Colts)
