1/6/17: Sunset and Sandwiches with Milt Schmidt
He always asked for “the Reuben, please.”
The landscape outside would vary as the seasons changed — from afternoons covered in snow to others that streaked the window panes with sunshine, all of them valuable — as the four of us: my wife, her grandmother, myself and Milt Schmidt sat and munched and talked. During one particularly adventurous outing, Milt inquired about the sliders. He got through two; I downed the third.
Yes, the Reuben, a sandwich topped with sauerkraut, was often the preferred meal of a man who once centered the vaunted “Kraut Line” for the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League. And despite his predictable lunch habits, Milt Schmidt was perhaps the most uncommon person I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.
If I met Milt Schmidt at sunset in his life, what a sunset it was.
Milt had indeed been sanded down over the decades, no longer the hard-charging practitioner of Old Time Hockey, a sport as violent as it was beautiful. He dressed neatly — jacket and tie for a formal meal, button-down and a sweater for his Reuben. His still-confident strides came with the assist of a cane. Other diners inevitably noticed Milt and asked him to come over and say a quick hello to a visiting son or daughter, the “big Bruins fan.” The Hockey Hall of Famer was generous and engaging, quick with a joke, and man, could he ever command an audience.
In between bites of sandwich, or perhaps as he worked on a cookie, later, seated in a comfortable chair by the window, Milt would ask my wife and I about our various goings-on (how was that radio job? Had I run into this writer or that player? If so, give them my best). At some point I’d fire a hockey-related question in his direction and Milt the storyteller would roar to life like a two-stroke engine, eyes shining, hands punctuating the details as he wove tales of his best friends, most formidable opponents and bitter adversaries — Milt once said he forfeited his candidacy for the Lady Byng Trophy just by stepping onto the ice, so there were a few of those, too.
A favorite topic was peculiar old codger Eddie Shore, legend of the league’s formative years and Milt’s Bruins teammate his first three-plus seasons. It could have been the time Shore told an 18-year old Milt he’d never make it as a pro, skating the way he did, before Dit Clapper got wind of it and told Shore off. Or the time an overly critical Shore, either skeptical of the sharpness of his skates or just being a jerk, had a fast one pulled on him by the team’s equipment boy.
There was Milt’s trip to Ontario in the early 1960’s to scout two kids (“Eaton and Higgins”) who weren’t Bobby Orr, when he and his Bruins colleagues first observed the 12-year old version of the greatest hockey player to ever live.
Or there was the time he cleaned out Maurice Richard with a cross-check (much to the Rocket’s amazement) in retaliation for the Montreal sniper breaking his nose. Or was it a tooth? I think it was both. And several teeth.
Milt broke, tore, sprained everything in his 16 years in the NHL, a center with speed, nimble movement and dexterity with the puck who finished his hits and wasn’t afraid to go into the corners. Milt won two Stanley Cups, the Hart Trophy as league MVP, and led the NHL in scoring playing that way. These were days before the players had a union, hell, decades before helmets. Milt and his contemporaries made peanuts compared to today’s stars, and while he mostly refrained from outright character assassination, he didn’t always succeed in hiding his distaste for various ownership and management types.
A member of the Greatest Generation who served in the Royal Canadian Air Force for three years in the prime of his career, he once told me a story of a particularly close call while stationed in England during World War II. Returning intact, he came back to hockey at war’s end, retired with bad knees at 36, moved to the bench, then the front office, most notably fleecing the Blackhawks in a trade for Hall of Famer Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge and Fred Stanfield — three key cogs in Boston’s Stanley Cup teams of 1970 and ‘72.
He persevered to the edge of the century mark, spending his latter years in the suburbs, the Garden ice within reach but his accomplishments difficult to grasp for fans of today’s Bruins who can barely remember what Cam Neely was like on two good knees.
Bruins of slightly more recent vintage would stop by to visit: “Chief” John Bucyk was a regular, of course there was Orr, and former team captain Wayne Cashman just checked in around Christmastime. When the Bruins lifted the Cup in 2011, it passed through Milt’s retirement community. And of course, there was Opening Night less than three months ago, when Orr wheeled Milt out to center ice to drop the puck. It was a long day for Milt — his bones on many days probably felt like a hundred and ninety-eight, but he made it and piped up to 6'9" Boston captain Zdeno Chara, “you’ve gotten taller,” as was his custom.
With Milt’s passing on Wednesday, the Bruins family and the entire NHL community has reached consensus: the world will be less interesting, a little less kind without hockey’s oldest living player, a person Orr himself described as “the ultimate gentleman.” I’ll remember the laugh, the stories, the time he clowned around with a press-on mustache at Christmas dinner, the sincerity with which he treated me and those I care about. And the Reubens.
For Milt, keeping a positive attitude way into his nineties was just something you did, like supporting your teammates or serving your country. For myself and others, it was one of the best sunsets we’ve ever seen.
