On the Trail to Gold: Bobby Kromm recalls 1961

Originally published on IHWC.NET in 2001

By Lucas Aykroyd

2001 marks the fortieth anniversary of Canada’s last victory at the IIHF World Championships with an exclusively amateur roster. It was a small town from British Columbia in Western Canada that achieved this feat, and player-coach Bobby Kromm led the way for the Trail Smoke Eaters. The team went undefeated in seven games in Switzerland, scoring 45 goals and allowing just 11, with a tie against Czechoslovakia the only “blemish” on their record. Kromm played seventeen seasons in the WIHL with Trail, Kimberley and Nelson and was the league’s all-time scoring leader with 783 points. As a coach, one of his international highlights was working with Don Cherry and Scotty Bowman behind Team Canada’s bench at the inaugural Canada Cup in 1976. Kromm also earned Coach of the Year honors in the WHA with the Winnipeg Jets and in the NHL with the Detroit Red Wings. But he’s best remembered for his heroic efforts with the squad that would boast Canada’s last World Championships gold until 1994. IHWC.NET recently spoke by phone with Kromm from his residence in Michigan.

IHWC.NET: First off, how do you feel about being inducted into the British Columbia Hockey Hall of Fame this year?

Bobby Kromm: It’s a great honor and it was a surprise to me. My old teammate Norm Lenardon kind of let the cat out of the bag to me that it was a possibility, and then I heard from Penticton that I was going to be inducted. It’s a pretty good selection of players going in this year.

IHWC.NET: Forty years after winning the 1961 World Championships, how do you look back on that accomplishment?

Kromm: That’s a long time ago, but again, it was a great honor, and it’s probably one of my better accomplishments in my career. Our team had about 11 or 12 local fellows who grew up in Trail. Nobody really gave us a chance, including [Head Coach] Dick Irvin of the Montreal Canadiens, that particular time. We had a lot of negative press about us representing Canada over there. But I worked the team very hard during the season here in British Columbia and then we went on a tour in Europe. We played about 18 or 21 games, which really helped us. My feeling was that prior to going over there, we’d heard of the Europeans having great conditioning, and I wanted our team to be as good or even better conditioned than they were. I think we proved our point when we got over there.

IHWC.NET: During the games in Lausanne, what were the challenges of playing on a frozen outdoor swimming pool surrounded by diving towers?

Kromm: It was a wonderful setting after the exhibition series we’d played. We were in the Iron Curtain countries of Czechoslovakia and Russia for more than two weeks. When we finally got out of there and played our last game in Italy, everyone had to go and change because we were going to take a bus to Innsbruck, Austria on our way to Switzerland. When we got there, all the eight teams had their own hotels. It was wonderful. It was an outdoor rink and it was 65 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter over there. It was a tremendous experience. We had a tough game against the Czechs. We outshot them soundly, but all they did was sit back from center ice. We were fortunate that we were able to tie the game, because the Czechs were ahead of us 1-0 for some time.

IHWC.NET: The Soviets considered Seth Martin to be a great goalie and some later expressed surprise that he didn’t play for Canada in the 1972 Summit Series. Can you describe what made Seth so successful?

Kromm: He was a moody goaltender. When he walked in the dressing room, you could tell whether he was ready to play or not. Well, he was ready over there. We were shorthanded a couple of times in the first period against the Russians, and he and the defense played very well.

IHWC.NET: Who were some of the other key players on the 1961 team?

Kromm: Norm Lenardon scored the key goal against the Russians when we beat them 5-1. It was really a team effort. We had a very strong defense with Darryl Sly, whom we picked up as a replacement, along with Harry Smith, Don Fletcher, and George Ferguson. They played extremely well and we had a good goaltender in Seth Martin, as I mentioned. And we had good balance up front with Jackie MacLeod, Harold Jones, and Adolf Tambellini. Those were some of our key players.

IHWC.NET: What changed after 1961 to prevent Canada from winning another gold medal with an amateur team?

Kromm: I don’t know. We went back in 1963 and we lost 4-2 to the Russians. Our team wasn’t as good then, because we didn’t get any financial help or any player help from the CHA. They felt that we could do it the way we did it the last time. I know I had Bert Olmstead on the hook, but Harold Ballard couldn’t make a deal with the Rangers, and Bert said he would play for the New York Rangers when he got back from that, but that didn’t pan out.

IHWC.NET: Did you get a sense in advance in 1963 that things weren’t going to go as well?

Kromm: I remember that year I was scouting the Russians in Winnipeg. I flew from Trail to Winnipeg to watch them play. And after the game, I got in the elevator with the Mayorov brothers [Boris and Evgeni] and some other Russian players. They’d been presented with these CCM gloves and they said, “These are the gloves that we’re going to beat you with.” And they did!

IHWC.NET: In your WHA coaching career, you worked with a number of European players. Did your experiences at the World Championships help you in that regard?

Kromm: Absolutely. There were two or three of them who had different ideas. They were socialists, and they didn’t like the discipline. But if you played for me, then you had to have discipline. Good players make good coaches, that’s my philosophy.

IHWC.NET: What do you think of the way guys like Ray Ferraro, Adam Deadmarsh and your son Rich Kromm have carried on the Trail hockey tradition?

Kromm: I’m very happy and there are other young fellows who have come out of that area, Castlegar too. Quite a few of them went to my hockey school, which I ran for 11 years. I was pretty proud of them. Hopefully they learned something at these schools. It’s nice to see these kids out of Trail come out and make it and do well.