I just got off the phone with Kyle Beach, who was generous enough to talk to me during a lunch break as he was driving out to his grandfather’s cabin north of Kelowna, B.C.
Ostensibly the conversation was about Beach’s experience at the NHL draft combine, which wrapped up yesterday in Toronto. A story about it will appear in the paper sometime next week.
However, the most interesting bit of news was that Beach played almost all of last season with a sports hernia. Beach said it didn’t cause him any pain during the first half, but he tweaked it early in the second half and was in considerable pain the rest of the way. That may account for some of the dropoff in his production as the season progressed. He had surgery to repair the hernia after the season ended, and he expects to be fully recovered in time for training camp.
One consequence of the surgery was that Beach was only a limited participant at the combine. Beach only underwent a basic physical and didn’t participate in any of the physical testing.
However, Beach more than made up for his lack of action in physical testing during the interview portion of the combine. Beach had meetings with 27 of the 30 NHL teams, all of which were curious about Beach’s reputation for being a loose cannon both on and off the ice. That reputation has caused Beach’s draft status to fluxuate up and down the first round of the draft. Beach said he was happy the set the record straight about incidents which have been “blown out of proportion.”
With the combine over, next up for Beach is the draft, which takes place June 20-21 in Ottawa.
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