NHL scouts mostly know what they’re getting with Jake Bean.
Good skater. Check.
Offensive upside. Oh yeah.
Hockey intelligence. Off the charts.
They should probably add ‘tough as nails’ to the checklist.
That might come as a bit of a surprise to those who look at the Calgary Hitmen defenceman’s numbers (30 penalty minutes over his first two seasons) and see that he was named the WHL Eastern Conference’s most sportsmanlike player in 2015-16.
But Bean recently revealed he played a couple of playoff games on a broken foot that he suffered after blocking a shot in Game 4 of the club’s opening-round series against the Red Deer Rebels.