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I went to the Spokane Chiefs/Seattle Thunderbirds game last night. Beach is playing for Spokane. So far this season he has been on fire, scoring 13 goals in the first 13 games of the season going into last night. He is playing RW. I have to say that for most of the first two periods I was pretty unimpressed. I don't know if I was expecting a "man among boys" type of thing but I was definitely expecting more than what I saw early on. On the positive side he definitely active, consistently tapping the ice, calling for the puck. You could tell that he wanted the puck and wanted to try and make plays with the puck. In the offensive zone he showed some physicality. He finished his checks and didn't mind mixing it up in the corners. In the defensive zone he had a bad habit of hanging back at the blue line looking for the outlet pass. He rarely, if ever forechecked. My biggest criticism would be that he looked like he was trying to cherry pick sometimes, that's how far back he was playing on defense. He would kind of drift around at center ice waiting for the puck to move towards him which I did not like at all. Late in the second period the score was 1-0, Seattle. I am going to try to type this from memory. It happened so fast and there is no replay on the scoreboard. The puck got dumped in behind the goal and came out along the right boards. Beach picked it up and kind of drifted/sprang/skated backwards off the boards to between the circles and just ripped a wrister over the goalie's glove hand. That was definitely an eye-opener. That thing was a laser beam and reminded me of Kane's turn-around wrister from a few games ago as far as the accuracy. Anyway, that goal showed me that the kid can play and has some special ability as far as goal-scoring goes. It was his ninth goal in the last 5 games. He also took a roughing minor at the end of the second. After he scored the goal he cupped his gloved hand to his ear b/c he had been getting booed and jeered for a good part of the game. Spokane won the game 2-1. So final conclusion from this fan's eyeballs: the kid is a pure goal-scorer who can disappear for long stretches of the game and is weak defensively. He is still a very unfinished product. But from that goal he scored I can see why they drafted him so high. There is big-time potential if they can break some of his poor habits. He's only 19 so I doubt he would be up next year, probably by 2011 is my guess.