(Piece by SJHL Co-Director of Media Jamie Neugebauer)
The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League is committed to celebrating and cherishing its alums’s achievements.
That includes hockey accomplishments, as well as non-hockey ones.
So, the story of Yorkton Terriers alum Craig Adam matters as much as that of Chris Kunitz and Curtis Joseph.
Adam, 57, has been a licensed real estate agent since 2002 and has built experience and a strong reputation in the Regina community with RE/MAX Crown Real Estate.
If that post-playing resume isn’t enough, he is a known entity in Saskatchewan sports broadcasting. He attended broadcast school at Mount Royal in the early 1990s, and spent 12 years working on air in radio and television in Yorkton, Lethbridge, AB and Regina. He co-hosted a popular local Regina sports show called ‘The Sportsline’, still beloved by locals who knew it in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
Through it all, he never forgot his time in the SJHL.
“What (the SJHL) does is create good people,” Adam says.
“It gave people a chance to grow and play junior hockey. It’s a great league. I run into so many players who were in that league back then. Now they’re business owners, they’re lawyers, they’re doctors, they’re community leaders.”
Born in Saskatoon, Adam was raised in Hudson Bay, SK, with fellow Terriers alum and current Dallas Stars bench boss Glen Gulutzan.
He played for the Terriers from 1987 to 1989, posting 46 points in 88 games under coach Dennis Polonich (a former Detroit Red Wing and native of nearby Foam Lake, SK).
Adam tells a story about how Polonich forced him and his teammates to work at the coach’s cabin at Fishing Lake.
He didn’t appreciate it then, but he understands it much better now.
“You know, I think a lot of times we think we’re all grown up, and we’re all mature when we’re 17, 18, 19 years old,” Adam says, “and you can’t understand why coaches do some things, and you get upset at them.”
“But on reflection, you look back and say, ‘Well, maybe I could have practiced a little harder. Maybe I could have done this a little better. I still bug him about the free labour. Here we are freezing our ‘you-know-whats’ off and trying to haul his dock out before the winter, but he called it a bonding experience.”
After graduating from the Saskatoon Contacts in U18, where he played for the legendary Jim McIntyre, Polonich recruited Adam to play for the Terriers ahead of the 1987-88 season.
There he played on a line with future Boston Bruins and Los Angeles Kings winger Sandy Moger, as well as with Gulutzen and Barry Neickar, who played for Hartford, Calgary, and Anaheim.
Adam also recalls facing the great Notre Dame Hounds team of Rob Brind’Amour, Joseph and others that went on to win the National Junior A title in the 1988 final, as well as the likes of current Toronto Maple Leafs bench boss Jim Hiller, then a Melville Millionaire.
“Rod the Bod (Brind’Amour), he’s 17, he’s like a truck,” Adam says.
“The linesman fakes to drop the puck, and Brind’Amour knocks the stick out of my hand. It’s now in the corner, and I have to go pick up my stick and go back to the faceoff circle. Of course, I’m looking up in the stands and all these NHL scouts, they’re writing on their paper, and I’m like, “Okay, this is not going well. He wins the draw (he scores), and they go on to win the game, and of course, win the Centennial Cup and have the career he has.”
“When he won that draw,” Adam jokes, “our paths ended up a little different. Who would have thought, right? Could have been me.”
Twenty-plus years into his real estate career, during which Adam has won numerous awards and recognition as one of RE/MAX’s best agents, he lives in Regina with his wife, Deb Duncan, and leads the Lakeview community in Saskatchewan’s capital city.
He sees many connections between his values as an associate Real Estate broker and the SJHL.
“The SJHL is big on relationships,” Adam says, “no different than in our business.”
“And it’s a matter of just taking care of people. If you take care of people, that comes back around, and I’ve been very fortunate over the years that people have been able to support our business.”
Adam is as important to the ongoing story of the SJHL as any alumnus who made a long NHL career, and he’s as proud of his SJHL roots as the league is of all who have gone on from the league a better person than they were when they entered it.
Find the full interview with Craig here:
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