Weston Woollard Adams (August 9, 1904 – March 19, 1973) was the director of the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League and son of fellow Hall-of-Famer Charles Adams.
After studying at Harvard where he played Goaltender on the varsity team, Adams became president of the Canadian American Hockey League farm team, the Boston Tigers, in 1932. Adams was also involved with other sports, as secretary to the National League's Boston Braves.
The Boston native took over the Bruins presidency from his father in 1936. While Adams was president of the Bruins, the team finished first in the NHL American Division from 1937–38 season to the 1940–41 regular season. They won the Stanley Cup in 1939, and 1941. As World War II commenced, he joined the US Navy eventually working his way up to the rank of commander. The teams performance waned over this time, and he was forced to accept a buyout offer from the Boston Garden-Arena Corporation, the Bruins' landlord. He began taking a more active role in searching for talent later in the 1950s. He conducted long scouting trips across North America, and he became chairman of the board of the Boston Garden-Arena Corporation in 1956.
Adams was again named President of the Bruins after Brown's death in 1964. Over the next few years, he brought in such players as Bobby Orr, Wayne Cashman, Dallas Smith, Don Awrey, Don Marcotte, Derek Sanderson and Eddie Westfall. He also developed the concept of the sixth attacker and secured the relationship between the AHL Boston Braves due to the AHL's loss of many players to the expanding NHL.
In addition to the Bruins, Adams also owned the Boston Braves, Oshawa Generals, Boston Rovers, and a horse racing stable.
Adams stepped down as president of the Bruins in 1970 replaced by his son Weston Adams, Jr. He remained on as Chairman of the Board until his death in 1973. Boston would win 2 more Stanley Cups in 1970, and 1972.
Weston was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as an Honoured Builder in 1972.
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“You seem to think that I am adapted to nothing but the sugar-plums of intellect and had better not try to digest anything stronger.... a writer of popular sketches in magazines; a lecturer before Lyceums and College societies; a dabbler in metaphysics, poetry, and art, than which I would rather die, for if it has come to that, alas! verily, as you say, mediocrity has fallen on the name of Adams.”
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