DetroitRedWings.com’s Dana Wakiji examines prospect forward David Pope’s 2017-18 campaign this morning, and Red Wings assistant GM Ryan Martin’s comments about Pope are telling:
Quotable: “Dramatic improvement. This was the best year he had by a long shot in his college career. Probably a testament to the time that he put in in the offseason more so than in years past. Also the coaching change at Nebraska-Omaha, I think benefited him and his development. But he made a commitment on his own dime and decided to live down here for the better part of the summer last year and trained with a group of pros and trained differently. I think the dividends paid off on the ice. He worked on his foot speed, his skating got better and I think the combination of his strength training and the work on his skating showed up on the ice and he had obviously a very, very successful senior year of college. He’ll come to the development camp and certainly play for us in the prospects tournament, then from there work right into main camp. Our expectation would be that he would be competing for a job in Detroit in main camp and then if he didn’t make Detroit, he’d be in Grand Rapids next year.” — Ryan Martin, Detroit Red Wings assistant general manager
I’m mostly hoping that he makes the NHL so that I can wear my pope hat to wings games.