Odd acquisition.. Another smallish winger we dont need, imo.. 5'11" 180lbs. Been in the league 9 years, we'll be his 7th team in the last 3 years.
Scored 21 goals his 2nd year in the league. Hovered around a point every 2 games for some years, then settled around a point every 3 games.
career: 613 games played, 129g 137a 266pts -21
Not sure why or what he was brought in for..
It would be easy to say that he is just a depth piece. But I'm not so sure, and although I don't know anything about him, I'll speculate on why he might have been brought in.
He's played the entire schedule for the Pens this year, and I understand he's taken a lot of shifts on the 2nd line - Malkin's line. The Pens have been terrible this year, and all of their players who have played significant minutes for the full schedule have +/- numbers in the -teens or -20's except for Beauvillier, who sits at -1. He doesn't take many penalties, and he happens to have been second on the team in number of hits along with his 13 goals, which was 5th on the team. Maybe what the Caps THINK they see is a disciplined, defensively responsible player who isn't afraid to mix it up and can still score upwards of 20 goals a season. IF they are right and can get something like that out of him, that sounds like a 3rd line wing in the playoffs to me, much more than a finesse player like Vrana or Frank, say. And even if the Caps use him as a depth piece this year, his cap hit now is $1.25 million, and given his vagabond status, they might be able to resign him for, say, AAV of $2 million to $2.5 million, which would be a couple million savings over Mangiapane. Finally, think about the motivation for Beauvillier. He's at a crossroads of his career, having bounced around like a ping-pong ball for the past few years, and all of a sudden he lands on a team that looks like it should have Stanley Cup dreams, at least, as he heads into UFA status this summer. If there were EVER a situation that would motivate a player to show his stuff and an environment that might display him in his best light as he looks for what will probably be his biggest payday, it would seem to be this.
All of this is speculation on my part. As I said, I really know nothing about the guy. But if I were going to look at who he is and dream up an explanation why the Caps may have made this seemingly marginal trade, and given up a 2nd round pick to do it, it would probably be along the lines of what I wrote in the preceding paragraph.