Welcome back to the second last entry into the Oil Rig’s annual player profile series for the 2024 year. After the Oil Rig’s vote, Beau Akey, a right shot defender from the OHL’s Barrie Colts was selected as the second best prospect within the Edmonton Oilers organization. Here’s a look at the highly touted defender.
Who is Beau Akey?
| Position | Handedness | Height | Weight | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RD | Right | 6’0” | 174 lbs | 21:51 |
Akey’s on-ice production
The 2005 born defender is a product of Waterloo, Ontario, and grew up playing for the Waterloo Wolves U15 AAA and U16 AAA programs. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic interrupting every 05’s Major Junior draft year, Akey was selected in the first round, 19th overall by the Barrie Colts in the 2021 OHL draft.
From there he was able to carve out a regular role as a top-six defender as a 16-year-old on a playoff contending Colts team in 2021–22.
The 2022–23 season was Akey’s draft year and he took significant steps forward in terms of offensive instincts, playmaking, and even more powerful skating being an impact defender. After the OHL season, Akey was selected in the second round, 56th overall with the Oilers first selection in the 2023 NHL draft.
This is especially impressive considering how strong Barries blueline was already sporting Brandt Clarke (LAK), Connor Punnet (DAL), and Artur Cholak (VGK).
Getting sent back to Barrie for the 2023–24 season, the Oilers expected high end play and for Akey to blossom into a top end defender, especially with the departure of Brandt Clarke from the Colts blueline. Akey accomplished this to an extent, for a short period of time.
This success culminated in the young Canadian signing his ELC with Edmonton on October 10, 2023.
Shortly after that however, Akey suffered a dreaded season ending shoulder injury just 14 games into the 2023–24 OHL campaign.
| Year | League | Team | GP | G | A | P | Playoff GP | Playoff G | Playoff A | Playoff P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021–22 | OHL | Barrie Colts | 61 | 5 | 11 | 16 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022–23 | OHL | Barrie Colts | 66 | 11 | 36 | 47 | 13 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| 2023–24 | OHL | Barrie Colts | 14 | 4 | 5 | 9 |
This injury put a serious damper on Akey’s development pathway. A year ago today he would have been labeled a second pairing NHL defender of the future, but now with the injury and lost key development time this throws that projection into question now.
Akey’s player profile
Akey shines as a shutdown defender in the D-zone, with quality physicality, and awareness, that is further aided by high end skating. He has some offensive upside through some good activations and playmaking ability.
This offensive upside that he has only started to discover could lead him to developing into more of a two-way defender upon his graduation to the pro-ranks.
Akey’s strengths
Skating
Akey projects to be an above average NHL skater largely due skating fluidity that is generated from good posture, agility, spacial management, and start/stop edgework.
His lower body skating posture shines as he has good knee and ankle flection, along with a upper body posturing that matches. Fundamentally this posture allows for quick rapid mobility, and increased power in his crossovers, and stride.
Akey is about as agile as they come, but does play a more conservative brand of hockey in terms of gap control and relatively good positional awareness.
Overall the 6’0” RD has decent route creation and and with more stride refinement could make his activations in offensive transition and o-zone play even more potent, and would reduce the risk of him chasing play even more.
This agility also allows for greater skating deception as the Colts defender makes relatively clean inside/outside cuts which displays some elements of spacial creation, but sometimes lacks to use it. However this creation alone is a transferable tool that could serve him well at the pro-level.
His spacial management shines in defensive transition and puck retrievals. Akey regularly plays with tight gap control where he excels at closing gaps quickly allowing him to kill rush plays often before the blue-line. This ability is generated through Akey’s quality balance, outside edge work, and acceleration.
In d-zone play he is much of the same, isolation to the outside through pace, and pushes to the boards exemplifying his skating aptitude, and his ability to kill rush based chances.
Physicality
Akey shows smart physicality through clear angles of attack that kill plays, consistent play engagement, and good physical habits.
In defensive transition and immediately upon d-zone entry Akey employs smart angles of attack that display good footwork, and establishes good inside body leverage to limit risk as opponents are taken into the boards. This physicality combined with ok defensive scanning make him an asset on retrievals.
His frequency of board battles is also quite high, and when taken into account his 60% winning percentage is that much more impressive.
In zone play he displays good habits that make him an physically demanding slot presence, through his quality player tie ups, and box outs, Akey makes it difficult for opposing players to establish o-zone positioning further reducing the chances against for the Barrie Colts.
This physical presence helps justify why he starts 48% of his shifts in the defensive zone. Despite his 0.69 hits per game he does make a physical difference in OHL outings.
His physical play engagement also shines in the O-zone with good body positioning to close off walls, an acute ability to employ good pinches with limited space, and this physical presence allows him to push off defensive pressure on O-zone entries.
One area that the young Oilers prospect does struggle with is muscle mass, as he can get physically outmaneuvered by some of the more mature players. This issue is natural for younger players so expect this to change as the Colts defender ages.
Defensive senses
Akey is a defensive play killer, and this can be attributed to quality defensive awareness, a notable motor, and a developing defensive play anticipation.
The Waterloo product simply knows what to do to maximize his teams defensive aptitude, through quality defensive scans he employs good in-zone risk assessment and an his positioning reflects that.
As a by product he shows an ability to read opponent passing lanes quite well, allowing him to minimize play creation around him and limit zone chances against.
His stick positioning particularly makes him an incredibly effective poke checker, and turnover generator.
In the defensive zone play he can dictate the pace of play quite well. This largely justifies his 1:49 of penalty kill time per game for this past season.
Further refinement in his defensive play anticipation will undoubtably increase his NHL floor.
In the offensive zone he shows flashes of smart play activations and and some play deception exemplified by good lane cuts, space manipulation, and play fakes. This side of his senses need much more refinement.
Akey’s areas of improvement
Akey’s offensive game leaves lots to be desired in terms of instincts. These are both elements that can be improved with his time in the CHL. with that being said this latest lost season does harm this refinement significantly.
Hockey senses
Hockey senses remain a concern, as the defender does show issues around offensive awareness. This is exemplified by some smart space creation and play manipulation only to not capitalize on that space and use it.
In offensive transition he often lacks full awareness hinting at under-developed offensive scanning, option identification, and play reading. Sometimes resulting in blatant puck turnovers, or a forward pass to a teammate under more pressure than him (pressure awareness).
This breakout ability is mirrored in the o-zone, as he rarely waits to identify better options in zone hinting at a developing offensive creativity, poise, decision making, and awareness. Additions of these elements could make him a breakout candidate for the 2024–25 season.
To take into account Akey does generate 1.38 scoring chances per game, 3:58 of penalty time and a 0.21 goals expected rate. These stats look promising at the surface level, but Akey’s effectiveness and point production could be significantly higher.
This is particularly evident in the Barrie defenders below average shot selection as he averages 5.5 shots per game but only has 41% accuracy.
His shot is another element of his game that could use improvement in terms of body positioning, control, and release. This is not to say its bad, but needs refinement to be transferable to the next level.
Similar to his puck handling as in his draft year he struggled with puck control, handling, and puck management. Although he has made some recent progress with it, he still needs more consistency especially in offensive transition.
For the 2023–24 season Akey attempted 26 passes per game with 87% accuracy.
Now these are all elements that Akey has worked to improve this past short season, and still has one remaining season to work on at the OHL level. The 2024–25 season will be make or break for Akey, as he proves more definitively that he can add a further offensive layer to his game.
Akey’s next steps
Expect Akey to return to the Barrie Colts for the 2024–25 season. Expect him to be the number one defender for Colts coach, Marty Williamson. The question still looms over how much of an impact this missed season will have on his development.
Expect him to be a competitive pro-player in another years time, and whether or not he competes at Condors training camps or Oilers will be dictated by this upcoming seasons performance.
Projection with the Oilers
Akey brings a lot of elements to like to the Oilers and will be an effective pro, the difference between his floor and ceiling will largely be determined by how many more layers he can add to his offensive game. Stat sheets never tell the full story and Akey’s stat lines are very much proof of that.
NHL ETA: two to three years
Role: Likely second-high end third pairing defence man at the NHL level
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