Cole Beaudoin isn’t walking into Rangers rookie camp with any interest in easing his way in. The 20-year-old center said it plainly on Friday: he wants an NHL job now, and he plans to spend camp making that case every day.
“I want to play in the NHL,” Beaudoin stated Friday.
That’s not a long-term dream for him. It’s the target for this season, with opening night in his sights. Beaudoin said that has been the mission since he first showed up at an NHL camp as an 18-year-old.
“That’s been my goal since I was an 18-year-old coming to my first NHL camp. I want to play in the NHL, ” he explained.
“That’s my goal coming out here for rookie camp, and then moving into main camp. It’s to make the team.
That’s my goal. I’m gonna push and play my game and lay it out there.”
The Rangers do have a crowded center picture already. Mika Zibanejad, J.T.
Miller, Noah Laba, and Joe Veleno are all penciled into the lineup, while Juuso Parssinen and Justin Dowling sit ahead of Beaudoin on the depth chart as veteran options. Still, Beaudoin made it clear that the numbers don’t change his approach.
He said he wants to “show [the Rangers] what I’m capable of. Show them I’m the workhorse I am, and the resiliency I have on and off the puck. The tenaciousness of just competing and not stopping.”
That kind of game has followed Beaudoin for a while. Scouts and prospect analysts have long latched onto the same traits: compete, motor, grit, passion. At 6-foot-2 and 209 pounds, he also brings a frame that makes the idea of him stepping into the NHL right away feel less like a reach and more like a real possibility.
The Rangers, of course, could still decide Hartford in the American Hockey League is the better landing spot to start the season. But there’s also a recent Rangers blueprint Beaudoin can point to.
Noah Laba showed up last year as a hungry prospect out of Colorado College, turned in a mature camp and preseason, and earned Mike Sullivan’s trust with a steady two-way game. Laba, then 22, opened the season on the third line against the Pittsburgh Penguins and went on to play 74 games as a rookie.
Beaudoin shares a lot of those same traits. In some circles, he’s viewed as an even stronger prospect, though projections still put him in a bottom-six NHL role.
The Utah Mammoth selected him in the first round, No. 24 overall, in the 2024 NHL Draft. He backed that up last season with a career-high 88 points - 33 goals and 55 assists - in 54 games for Barrie in the OHL. As captain, he then led the league in postseason scoring with 29 points - 10 goals and 19 assists - in 15 games, helping Barrie reach the league championship series before losing to Kitchener.
Beaudoin described himself as “A 200-foot centerman that is super reliable in the D zone. Making sure that I have my guy, make sure I block shots, box out if that’s on the PK.
But then also I feel like my offensive game progressed a lot, just being able to find guys, having to score goals, all that kind of stuff. I think that my 200-foot game has come around really well.
Make it easy for everyone else.”
He also said last season taught him more about being a leader while wearing the C for Barrie.
“I think that’s something last year in junior I tried to work on is being a good leader, being vocal on the ice, being vocal in the room, but also leading by example on and off the ice.”
Beaudoin said he has an “inner drive” that helps him get ready physically and mentally for what comes next. He also noted that his skating, once seen as a weakness, has improved a lot since he was drafted by Utah.
And when the trade to New York came through on July 1, he said he “was excited” while he was at Mammoth development camp.
“It’s a brand new start. It’s kind of nice.”
That fresh start turns real this weekend, when Beaudoin wears a Rangers sweater for the first time in rookie games against Philadelphia Flyers prospects in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
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For several of the rookies, this will be their first game action in the organization, including a big chunk of this years draft class. Jay Leach, hired recently to coach Hartford, is also making his organizational debut while handling rookie camp practices and games, which gives the Rangers another fresh eye on a group trying to make a first impression. The results in September do not settle anything, but they can shape the conversation fast, especially for prospects who know they are already on the clock. [Read more 🡒]