Determined Jay Beagle Looks To Finally Crack Capitals’ Roster

By Adam Vingan

This summer, the Washington Capitals made plenty of moves in order to improve their team. Five NHL veterans – Troy Brouwer, Jeff Halpern, Joel Ward, Roman Hamrlik and Tomas Vokoun – are seen by many to be the missing pieces that will finally get the Caps over the proverbial hump that are early postseason exits on their way to unprecedented success.

Considering the aforementioned players as well as the Caps’ returning core, the Caps really have just one roster spot available. As training camp began Saturday at Kettler Capitals Iceplex, several players are fighting for that one opening. Most are prospects who have yet play a NHL game, while others have tasted what it’s like to be a part of the Caps and are yearning for more. One of those players is forward Jay Beagle.

The 25-year-old Calgary, Alberta, Canada, native made his NHL debut in February 2009 and appeared in three games for Washington that season. In 2009-10, Beagle played in seven games, but it was last season that he finally got his first chance to be a regular when he appeared in 31 games and scored two goals. Beagle played regularly throughout December and January, including the Winter Classic, before being held as a healthy scratch throughout the playoffs. Yet, that wasn’t enough for Beagle, so he paired up with defenseman Karl Alzner this offseason and they worked together with the goal of getting each other in the best shape of their respective lives.

“Everybody knows on this team and a lot of people around here know Beags is an animal,” Alzner said. “It’s hard to keep him out of the gym. He loves to work hard and he feels good about it. I just wanted to do everything he did, pretty much. We would just get to the gym and we always made sure we got a good warmup. The trainer that we have is huge into making sure your body is really ready to go before you start even doing anything.”

“Really, it’s mechanics,” Alzner continued. “It’s not like we’re going in there and just beating our bodies up. Everything is very strict. Guys might look in the gym and watch us work out and be like, ‘What are those guys doing?’ It’s all planned and Beags is really into that. He’s that guy that is like, ‘Should we do an extra set of bench press today?’ I’m kind of like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. I’m good either way,’ and Beags is like, ‘Yeah’s let’s do that.’ It’s nice to have a guy like that.”

Alzner and Beagle worked out almost daily and also improved their diets, but not much is known about what exactly the two did. The reason for that, according to Alzner, is that Beagle did not want his competition to see what he was doing to prepare.

“He was secretive about everything,” Alzner said. “Our trainer wanted to put videos up on the internet of us working out just to kind of build his business and Beags was like, ‘No, you can’t do that. You can’t let my competition know.’”

As much as Alzner learned from Beagle, Beagle definitely took a lot away from Alzner, a player who has established himself as one of the NHL’s best young defensemen.

“His strengths are a lot of the places where my weaknesses are and my strengths are where his weaknesses are,” Beagle said, though he did not divulge what those strengths or weaknesses were. “It really worked out well where he would push me in a lot of places and I’d push him in a lot of places. It’s the best summer of training I’ve had and we both came back stronger and faster than we’ve ever been.”

Beagle’s versatility and experience definitely work in his favor. While prospects like Cody Eakin, Mattias Sjogren and Dmitry Orlov have no NHL experience, Beagle has played in 41 NHL games and has had the opportunity to play on a big stage like the Winter Classic. Beagle is comfortable at both the center and right wing positions, but despite his edge in those areas, he does not believe that they make him a frontrunner for the final roster spot.

“The thing is that you’re always competing for spots,” Beagle said. “The last couple of years, I was always competing against three or four guys. This year, it’s similar. I don’t feel like I have an edge. I feel like if I can work my hardest and try to make this team better, then they’re going to want me up here. It’s fun competing with other guys for spots. I’m a competitor, so I like to compete and it’s a lot of fun to come out and push yourself as hard as you can go everyday and lay it all out on the line and see how it goes.”

Whether or not Beagle finally becomes a regular on the Caps has yet to be seen as training camp just started, but he definitely has a very strong presence in his corner.

“He wants to make this team incredibly bad and he definitely works hard enough to be here,” Alzner said. “He deserves to be here, I think.”