BECK'S PATIENCE PAYING OFF
Mar 21, 2016By Tom Witosky | Follow @toskyAHLWild
Ask Colton Beck about playing professional hockey and he’ll give you a simple answer.
“There is no place I’d rather be than at the rink,” the 25-year-old Iowa Wild forward said recently. “My first love is the game of hockey. It’s never felt like a job.”
Beck’s enthusiasm for the game and his drive to get to the National Hockey League are two big reasons why he could be destined to be the next member of the Beck family to make it the highest level of professional hockey. Beck’s uncle, Barry, played 15 seasons in the NHL, mostly for Colorado and the New York Rangers, while Beck’s father, Murray, was drafted by the Houston Aeros of the old World Hockey Association in 1974 and played four years in the minors.
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“I was born with a stick in my hand,” Colton Beck said with a laugh. “But I also had some of the best support and coaching any young hockey player could have wanted from my Dad and my Mom.”
Beck arrived with the Iowa Wild in December when a rash of injuries forced a search for players who could help the club weather the extended loss of players like Zac Dalpe, Grayson Downing and Tyler Graovac. At the time, Beck, who played collegiate hockey for the University of Alaska Fairbanks Nanooks, had become a key cog for the ECHL’s Idaho Steelheads.
Last season, Beck started slow with the Steelheads, but ended the season with 48 points in 63 games and earned the club’s “Unsung Hero” award. When the Wild signed him to a player-tryout contract in December, Beck had become Idaho’s leading scorer with 23 points in 18 games and had been elected as an alternate captain.
Still, there is always a chance a minor league player won’t work out, but David Cunniff, the Wild’s interim head coach, said Beck has proven himself a key player in the line-up.
“He’s a hockey player,” Cunniff said. “When you call someone up from the minors, you are hoping to find a Colton Beck. He has been able to do anything that we have asked him to do.”
Cunniff said that Beck’s strength is a versatility that allows him to be placed in any number of roles depending on the team’s health or what it needs at a particular time.
“He has a very high hockey IQ and that makes him versatile. You can put him on a power play. He can be a PK guy. He can play both,” Cunniff said.
And, Cunniff said, Beck has the skill and tenacity to play on a checking line as much as on a scoring line. With that kind of versatility, Beck signed a one-year standard contract to finish the season.
“He is a guy who can play in the top two lines and help on offense,” Cunniff said. “But if you have a healthy enough top lines, he is a really good third line guy who can chip in and generate some offense but also play a smart role to make sure the line doesn’t get scored on.”
Beck said that much of his skill and hockey IQ comes from his father’s coaching and mentoring. “I was lucky because he was always honest with me,” Beck said. “If I didn’t play well, he would tell me and help me get better.”
Beck said his father’s mantra to him as he grew-up playing hockey was that “hard work makes you better.”
While the desire to play hockey remained constant, Beck said that his decision to play college hockey was an important one. Playing for Alaska-Fairbanks, Beck was one of the team’s leading scorers, finishing third on the scorer’s list twice and second in his final year.
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He also graduated with a degree in business and a minor in accounting.
“It was right decision for me,” Beck said. “I played four years of hockey in one of the coolest places in the world.”
Beck didn’t deny that he thought he should have been drafted while in college, but dismissed the notion that his size – 5-foot 10-inches and 188 pounds – warranted being ignored.
“Ten to 20 years ago, maybe size mattered more in the NHL,” he said. “But now the undersized players are doing well as long as they play a tough game. The game has changed that much.”
After a brief tryout in 2012-13 with St. John’s in the AHL, Beck had training camp tryouts with the Texas Stars before landing with the Idaho Steelheads.
With the Wild, Beck has found scoring to be more difficult than when he was with Idaho, but his role is much more structured.
“It’s so much more structured here,” he said. “Defense is emphasized so much more and having to make smart plays. It just forces you to think about what you are doing.”
At the same time, Beck has adopted the same approach taken by other key members of the Wild roster.
“He shows up every night and plays a simple, hard, buy-in game,” Wild forward Marc Hagel said. “He has put some points up as well. He’s been awesome. “
Hagel, who signed a free agent contract during the Wild’s first season here, said that Beck’s path to the Wild “is almost identical to mind.”
“I know what it is like,” Hagel said. “He skates so well and shoots the puck so hard his adjustment has been really quick.”
Like Hagel, who is in his third season in Des Moines, Beck would like to remain in the Wild’s organization next year. He said that the club’s improvement since December will continue as the season comes to an end.
“We intend to keep on winning as we have been and getting better,” Beck said. “We are going to focus on the rest of the season and not worry about what happened earlier. We’ve got a good team here and we just need to keep working.”