Adam Jecho
2024 NHL Draft Eligible
Position: C, Shoots: R
H/W: 6’5”, 201lbs
Date of Birth: 2006-03-24
Adam Jecho is the type of prospect who can be equal parts exciting and frustrating to scout. He will show occasional flashes of tantalizing potential, looking like the type of player who could become a dominant force in the NHL one day, but he almost always follows them up with long stretches where he is bizarrely ineffective or missing in action altogether. Trying to calculate the draft value of a prospect like this requires a carefully nuanced approach, because both the risk and the reward are enormous.
The Czech import is blessed with a massive frame and more skill than guys his size usually possess. He can be an explosive skater at times, needing only a few pushes with his long strides to cover a lot of distance, and he can sometimes be hard to strip the puck from once his feet get churning and he puts a defender on his back. He's also no slouch as a shooter, with sharp goal-scoring instincts and the ability to bury his clean looks.
One might ask, then, why Jecho's scoring totals this season aren't higher than they currently are. And that's an important question, because it's a sign that something (or multiple somethings) isn't quite clicking for him. Part of the problem is certainly his situation, as the young and rebuilding Oil Kings are one of the worst teams in the entire Canadian Hockey League, and this is still his first year playing hockey in North America. That's an especially tough adjustment. However, there are separate and specific elements of his game that need to be improved, which will be discussed throughout this article.
The good news for Jecho is that the issues holding him back right now seem generally fixable, if given sufficient recognition and attention, while his current strengths aren't the type of traits that will erode or rust during the development process. He has a legitimate shot at becoming an effective and rare piece of an NHL roster puzzle, if things shake out just right for him moving forward.
Skating:
Jecho is neither a burner nor a dancer, but nevertheless still moves around the ice quite well. He generates power through his lower body and has long, fluid skating strides. He's at his best building up a head of steam in a straight line, though he also possesses the balance and edge work necessary to be adaptive with his movements. Like a lot of other big guys with athletic mobility, he has the luxury of being able to get where he needs to go while expending less energy than his smaller peers. What his skating may lack in flashiness it makes up for with basic effectiveness.
Here’s a great rush from Jecho. He builds up a nice amount of speed to exit the zone with and then takes off once he gets the puck. He reaches the offensive zone with so much momentum that it backs up the opposing defenders, which provides him plenty of room to wrap all the way around the net.
Another wrap-around play here where he is able to beat the defender wide. The real beauty, though, is the balance and footwork he displays to receive the puck from behind with his back skate and then immediately pass it up to his stick.
This is a great example of how Jecho can be explosive at times and how he can catch opponents off guard with how quickly he attacks. Impressive stuff, too, with how he corrals the loose puck, shifts his weight and then snipes against the grain, all in one motion.
Grade: 55
Shot:
A player's goal-scoring totals alone sometimes don't paint an accurate picture of his actual shooting ability, and Jecho fits into this category. He owns a hard, heavy shot that comes off his stick quickly, both when he comes in bearing down with the puck or when he's trying to convert a puck that comes to him, whether that's off of a pass or a rebound or a bounce. The Oil Kings really struggle offensively as a team, and on the powerplay they usually utilize Jecho around the net front where he doesn't get many clean shooting looks, so it's fair to wonder if his counting stats would be higher right now if he was playing in a different environment.
You can see Jecho sniff out this scoring chance before it becomes clear, which is a great goal-scoring instinct to have. The finish is pretty snazzy too. He’s able to fire almost instantly after the puck lands on his stick, and it’s a laser.
Here’s another example of Jecho correctly recognizing an opportunity to generate a look at the net. And it sure is one ferocious shot. You can visibly see how much heat he puts on this one.
Nasty bit of stick work from him here, using it to get the goalie to bite and commit to dropping down, before then cleanly sliding the puck around and behind.
Jecho doesn’t miss many of these kinds of looks. Now, getting this much time and space happens significantly less often in the NHL than it does in the WHL. The speed of his release isn’t a problem overall, but he’ll need to work on making it even faster if he wants to become a regular goal-scorer at the sport’s highest level.
Grade: 55
Skills:
Jecho is certainly not shy about carrying the puck and trying to make plays with it... for better and for worse. There are undeniably times where he can make magic happen, especially when he's blending his puck-handling with his speed while also using his frame to help protect the biscuit. He also displays some very good awareness and tendencies as a playmaker. However, he is painfully prone to bobbling or mishandling the puck at any given moment, leading to a high frequency of turnovers. This is probably the area that he should focus on the most with his individual skill training moving forward, trying to clean up these routine errors through a rigorous adherence to drills.
Jecho has a great sense of gravity. He knows exactly what he’s doing here, dusting the puck off just long enough to draw the defenders towards him while timing the arrival of his passing target, which he hits perfectly. Heady stuff.
Another impressive clip from him here. Gains the zone on the powerplay, draws penalty killing coverage in towards him using more of that gravity, but then turns and finds his wide open teammate for a pass.
This is a sublime play, cutting to the middle and flashing some stick language that signals a shot is coming, before instead passing it deftly over to set up a one-timer goal.
This is a very rough clip for Jecho. There’s just no excuse to turn the puck over this badly. It seems like a bad passing idea to begin with, but it’s made even worse by the pass being a muffin that goes right into the skates of a Lethbridge player.
Another glaring example of him mishandling the puck. He has plenty of time and space to make a play, but instead it ends up in an unforced error that causes a change in possession.
Not much to say here other than “yuck.”
Grade: 50
Smarts:
To put it simply, with the tools that Jecho has in his toolbox he should be more impactful than he's been throughout this season, which then leads to questions about his overall hockey sense. When you watch him closely you begin to see instances where he's not processing the play around him quite as quickly or accurately as others on the ice are, and that holds him back. Are these limitations built deep into his hardware, or will they naturally start to fall away as he gains maturity and experience? The good news, though, is that he does have some important habits in place. He'll have a rough idea of what he needs to do most of the time and will usually apply himself, even if the execution isn't quite there. That means that there's potential for improvement in this area, though it's hard to calculate just how much refinement can be made over time.
Watch Jecho’s head movement throughout this shift. He’s shoulder checking constantly, trying to take stock of where everyone on the ice is around him, which is an important habit to have. This awareness leads to a smart drive to the net for a deflection, though the puck doesn’t actually get sent his way, unfortunately.
Jecho knows that his teammates on the ice need a change, so he takes a clever route to draw them some time, which also manages to bring all five Rebels back into their own defensive zone and then well away from the puck. He sticks with the play, too, and even manages to force a short-lized zone entry.
This play is breaking fast, and Jecho knows that he doesn’t have enough time to sneak in more than a quick look or two behind him. No matter. He already knows that a Hurricanes player is rushing to the back door for a pass, and manages to disrupt the play at exactly the right time, mostly sight unseen.
Jecho isn’t an especially good penalty killer right now, but there are pieces there to work with. That’s an important decision he makes in this clip to position himself in the slot, possibly saving a goal. He also picks a good time to telescope out closer to the point, blocking the shot that comes toward him.
Grade: 55
Physicality/Compete:
This is by far the hardest area of Jecho's to analyze and grade. For a player of his size he is shockingly ineffective with his physical play right now. He doesn't fully understand how to leverage his natural advantages, and often comes out on the wrong side of body contact in ways that shouldn't happen. And while his compete level can be fantastic at times, helping him become a very disruptive force, his engagement wavers from shift to shift and can disappear for long stretches. All that said, these are things that can conceivably be ironed out over time, especially if he can find himself in an environment that is more conducive to his growth.
This is a perfect example of how much of a menace Jecho can be on the forecheck. His fingerprints are all over this play, using his hustle to force the opposing players into making rushed decisions, which eventually leads to a scoring chance and gaining possession. He then makes a great spin play on the boards to protect the puck before passing it off to kickstart a brief cycle attempt for his line.
This isn’t a fancy play whatsoever, but it does showcase how much of an advantage his huge frame is. The first defender on him just can’t get around his back on the backcheck, and then the second defender is thwarted by Jecho keeping the puck wide and out of reach.
Great effort from him here on the backcheck, and it doesn’t look like he has to exert himself too much to knock over the Rebels player. Too bad he ends this play by taking an unnecessary penalty.
This really isn’t much of a hit that Jecho receives, but it’s somehow enough to knock him over and force him to cough up the puck. Luckily, getting stronger on his feet should be something that comes to him over time.
Red Deer forward Jhett Larson is listed on the WHL website at 5-foot-8 and 178 pounds. That’s not the type of player who should be able to knock over someone of Jecho’s size along the boards, yet that’s exactly what happens in this clip.
He’s the one initiating contact in this clip, but that’s an awfully soft bump on an opposing player that he had a clean hit lined up for. Making matters worse, the hit failed to be disruptive, allowing Calgary’s Carter Yakemchuk to easily spin off of it and then fire the puck away.
Grade: 55
OFP: 53.75
A note on the 20-80 scale used above. We look at five attributes (skating, shooting, puck skills, hockey IQ and physicality) for skaters and six for goalies (athleticism/quickness, compete/temperament, vision/play reading, technique/style, rebound control and puck handling). Each individual attribute is graded along the 20-80 scale, which includes half-grades. The idea is that a projection of 50 in a given attribute meant that our observer believed that the player could get to roughly NHL average at that attribute at maturity.