Happy New Year everyone.
I really enjoyed some recent postings here that touched on the history of both the hobby and the game so thought I would share some info and musings about three of my favorite players (and one of my collecting focuses), Boston’s Kraut Line; I originally put most of the following together with thoughts of sending it in to one of the mags but never got around to it. I’m not old enough to have seen them play but have learned enough about them to have developed an appreciation and respect for both what they accomplished and the way that they played (being a life-long Bruins fanatic no doubt also helped). This posting was really prompted by a recent pick-up, the photo shown below – while not an original and as such of nominal value, I thought that it was such a great and historically significant shot that I had to have it for the PC.
“The Greatest Line”
By almost any measure, Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart enjoyed distinguished hockey careers, winning a host of individual awards (three Lady Byngs for Bauer, Art Ross and Hart for Schmidt, multiple all-star appearances for all three) but it’s what they accomplished and experienced together both on and off the ice that truly sets them apart. Most fans are familiar with the story of how, at the height of their careers, after two Stanley Cups with the Bruins in 1939 and 1940 (and after finishing 1-2-3 in league scoring in 1940) all three chose to put duty first and enlisted in the Canadian Air Force. Schmidt cites the last game they played before embarking on this noble sabbatical as his most memorable, when after a thorough thrashing of the Habs the three were hoisted to the shoulders of both teams and carried from the ice to a standing ovation; in Montreal of all places.
What some may not know is that the line was actually formed in the AHL when the three Kitchener-Waterloo natives played for the Providence Reds. Bruins fans were thanking providence in more ways than one when the trio was reunited on the big club in 1937 and began a run of first-place finishes and the two Cups. But their partnership can be traced even further back, as teammates on the junior Kitchener Greenshirts and, by some accounts, as childhood friends. How well did they play together ? After enlisting and being stationed in Ottawa they suited up with the RCAF Flyers of the Quebec Senior League and capture minor hockey’s biggest prize, the Allan Cup; later transferred to Halifax, they found time to help a local team win the city championship.
Following the war the Krauts played together for two more seasons, taking the Bruins again to the Cup final, until Bauer’s retirement in 1947. In what could not have been a better scripted ending to their professional relationship, Bauer returned to play a final game in 1952, the night that the three friends’ jerseys were retired by the Bruins, and set up Schmidt’s 200th career goal (with the other assist to Dumart of course!).
Bobby Bauer passed away in 1964; Woody Dumart in 2001; Milt Schmidt, arguably the greatest Bruin of them all, is approaching 90 years of age; all three were inducted into the HHOF, Bauer posthumously in 1996. Their longevity as a unit is nothing short of remarkable, by today’s or any other era’s standards; and it would be hard to argue that they achieved, to a greater degree than any other line that the hockey world has seen, what really best defines that relationship – the Krauts were indeed greater than the sum of their parts.
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