Red Wings prospect Jack Adams had an abbreviated rookie season at Union College, and his in-and-out-of-the-lineup status yielded a decent but not great set of “numbers” for DetroitRedWings.com’s Arthur J. Regner to analyze.
As such, Regner’s conversation with Adams’ coach is more telling than the stats from Adams’ freshman season:
Quotable: “Jack really improved throughout the course of the season for us. What was really impressive about Jack was his vision, his ability to create plays coming out of our defensive zone, making the right play which led to rushes and scoring chances. That was one of the areas where Jack was kind of a surprise. His size and skating ability, he was able to use that as the season wore on and he became a valuable asset for us and he actually had some power play time. One of the hardest things to do is to get players, especially after the season he had in the USHL, transitioning to college, to get a player with his skill set to play a 200-foot game. People have a variation to what a 200-foot game is. Ours is a little different at Union College than somewhere else and for what we wanted I think Jack had his ups and downs with it and towards the end of the season he was really starting to pick that up. Players when they’re not playing sometimes they’re not happy and if they are happy, I’m not sure that’s a guy the Red Wings want.” – Rick Bennett, head coach at Union College
