Milt Schmidt, Bruins legend and Hockey Hall of Famer, dead at 98

Alumni legend Milt Schmidt of the Boston Bruins poses in front of in front of the locker room prior to the game against the Detroit Red Wings at the TD Garden on October 14, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Milt Schmidt, the Boston Bruins legend and Hockey Hall of Famer, has died at the age of 98.

On Sunday, prior to the 2017 NHL Centennial Classic, Schmidt was named as one of the league’s 100 greatest players, and rightfully so. He scored 229 goals and recorded 575 points in 776 games, all with the Bruins.

Schmidt joined the Bruins during the 1936-37 season and two years later helped the team to first place in the American Division. While Boston would fall short in the playoffs at the hands of the Maple Leafs, they would get revenge the following season by winning their second Stanley Cup with a 4-1 series victory over Toronto.

The Bruins would win another Cup two seasons later, knocking out the Leafs in seven games in the semifinals before sweeping the Detroit Red Wings in the final. During this period of success, Schmidt was part of the famed “Kraut Line” with childhood friends Woody Dumart and Bobby Bauer. The trio had such great great chemistry that they finished 1-2-3 in scoring for the 1939-40 NHL season, with Schmidt, who was also known as “Mr. Bruin,” taking home the scoring title with 52 points in 48 games.

Schmidt’s career would be in for a major change toward the end of the 1941-21 season when he, along with his Kraut Line mates, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II.

The Kitchener, Ontario native would miss three full NHL seasons, but that time away from hockey didn’t affect Schmidt’s production with the Bruins. The year after returning from war, Schmidt had his best campaign scoring 27 goals and recording 62 points.

That season would mark the end of the “Kraut Line.”

Canadian professional hockey players and childhood friends (left to right) Bobby Bauer (1915 – 1964), Woody Dumart (1916 – 2001), and Milt Schmidt of the Boston Bruins’ legendary ‘Kraut Line’ sit on a bench in the locker room and pose for a photograph before their last professional game before joining the Royal Canadian Air Force, 1942.

Bauer retired in 1947, but Schmidt remained productive with the Bruins, winning the 1951 Hart Trophy as league MVP with a 22-goal, 61-point season. Four seasons later, Schmidt himself hung up his skates and took over as the team’s head coach.

Schmidt would coach the Bruins for 11 seasons over two tenures, leading them to back-to-back Cup Finals where they would fall to the Montreal Canadiens both times.

After his time as head coach, Schmidt then moved upstairs in 1967 to take the general manager’s role as the NHL doubled in size. As the team’s architect, Boston would win two more Cups in 1970 and 1972, with Schmidt making a franchise-changing deal just as he was taking the reins when he acquired Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge and Fred Stanfield from the Chicago Blackhawks.

“I called [Bruins president] Weston Adams Sr., who was sick in bed at the time,” Schmidt recalled to the Boston Globe in 2013. “I told him about the names. Finally, he said, ‘Milt, if you think this is going to help our hockey club, go ahead and do it.’

“That’s all I needed. If he would have said no, that was it.”

After a short stint as head coach and GM of the expansion Washington Capitals, Schmidt returned to the Bruins organization and served in various capacities. His No. 15 was retired at Boston Garden in 1980, 19 years after he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

In recent years Schmidt made appearances during Bruins game. Most recently, he attended their 2016-17 home opener in October when he did the ceremonial faceoff honors with Bobby Orr.

Schmidt’s Hall of Fame career saw him win four Cups, be named to four NHL All-Star Games, make three First Team All-Star squads and win a scoring title in 1940. His contributions to the game in the United States also earned him the Lester Patrick Trophy in 1996.

“It would be a challenge to find anyone who took greater pride in being a Boston Bruin than Milt Schmidt did – be it as a player, an executive or an ambassador over the 80-plus years he served the franchise, the City of Boston and the National Hockey League,” said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in a statement. “Milt’s respect for the game was matched by his humility and was mirrored by the great respect with which his opponents, and generations of Bruins players, treated him through the years.

“An ultimate competitor, a mainstay of two Bruins Stanley Cups as a player and architect of two more as the Bruins’ General Manager, Milt was a landmark presence in Boston’s sports landscape. The NHL family cherishes his contribution to our history and sends deepest condolences to his family, fans and all whose lives he touched.”