The Hurricanes Jake Bean Pick
Ten years ago in Buffalo, Ron Francis walked to the podium with the 13th pick and took a defenseman named Jake Bean.
Carolina had drafted Haydn Fleury seventh overall in 2014. Noah Hanifin fifth overall in 2015. Both left-handed defensemen. Everybody assumed 2016 was the year they finally took a forward — Kunin was there, Bellows was there, Howden was there.
They took another left-handed defenseman.
The reaction from the fan base was immediate and it was not positive. And then Boston took Charlie McAvoy with the very next pick, which is the part that's never really stopped stinging.
He wasn't a bad prospect
This is the thing people forget when they use Bean as shorthand for the bad years.
He'd scored 24 goals as an 18-year-old defenseman. That was a Calgary Hitmen franchise record. He'd never even been drafted into the WHL — went undrafted in the bantam draft, signed with his hometown team, and turned into one of the best defensemen in the league.
TSN had him 12th. Pronman had him 19th and tenth in the draft for hockey sense. The book on him was that he could skate, he could pass, he processed the game fast, and he'd run a power play at the NHL level someday. The knock was that his first step was slow and he wasn't physical.
Then he got to Charlotte and just kept being good. AHL All-Rookie Team in 2019. First All-Star Team in 2020. And the Eddie Shore Award in 2020, which goes to the best defenseman in the American Hockey League.
That's not a bust. That's a guy who did everything you'd ask a prospect to do.
And then Rod
Here's where it falls apart.
Bean's defensive game wasn't going to hold up in Brind'Amour's system. That's the whole story. The offense was real, the skating was fine, the AHL trophies were legitimate. But this team's identity is built on defending, and Rod does not put players on the ice he doesn't trust in his own end.
Bean played 44 NHL games for Carolina. Forty-four. Then they moved him before the 2021 draft for the 44th overall pick.
Forty-four games for the 44th pick. I didn't plan that and I don't love it.
The pick became Aleksi Heimosalmi.
What I actually think about it now
For a long time I filed this under "evidence the drought was our own fault." Three straight top-13 defensemen, McAvoy going one slot later, nothing to show for it.
I've come around some.
The Bean pick wasn't wrong on talent. It was wrong on fit, and Carolina didn't know that in 2016 because Brind'Amour wasn't the coach yet — Bill Peters was, and Rod didn't take over until 2018. By the time the system that would define this franchise actually existed, Bean was already in the organization and already the wrong shape for it.
That's not a scouting failure. That's a timing problem.
And the flip side of the same coin is the thing that just won a Cup. Rod's unwillingness to play guys he doesn't trust defensively is exactly why Carolina lost three games in the entire 2026 postseason. It's why Martinook has a job. It's why Jarvis kills penalties. It's the whole model.
A system that strict is going to spit out talented players who can't fit. Bean was the first big one.
Where he ended up
He's fine, for what it's worth. Went to Columbus, now he's in Calgary, playing in his hometown, ten years into a career as an NHL defenseman.
Being the 13th pick who becomes a serviceable NHLer is not a tragedy. Most 13th picks don't get that far. He just isn't Charlie McAvoy, and he was never going to be the guy who got Carolina out of the second round.
He had surgery last year and missed most of the season. The details of the injury are murky but I wish him well on the recovery. No ill will.
The version I'd tell a Bruins fan
You got the better player. That's just true and I'm not going to argue it.
But we got a coach two years later who wouldn't play him, traded him for a second, and won a Cup in June with a roster full of guys who fit.
I'll take that trade. I'd just have preferred to not need it.
