Obituary / Bobby Kromm: Led Jets to Avco heights
Twice named coach of year in long career
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/06/2010 (5942 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Former Winnipeg Jets and Detroit Red Wings coach Bobby Kromm has died.
The Fred Wood Funeral Home in Livonia, Mich., near Detroit, said Kromm died Wednesday, one day after his 82nd birthday. The team says on its website the cause was complications from colon cancer.
Kromm moved to Winnipeg and the WHA’s Jets in 1975 and in his first year on the job led the team to the Avco Cup. The Jets featured Bobby Hull, Lars-Erik Sjoberg, Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg on the ice.
Kromm brought them together and the club went 52-27-2 in the regular season.
He was named WHA coach of the year and the Jets captured the WHA title in a sweep of Gordie Howe’s Houston Aeros in the final.
Kromm stayed for one more season before jumping to the Red Wings. There was talk of promoting him to GM in Winnipeg, but he wouldn’t go along with replacing Rudy Pilous, who had originally brought him to the Jets.
In 1976, Kromm’s last year in Winnipeg, the Jets finished with a 46-32-2 mark, and after battling their way to the league final, lost to the Quebec Nordiques.
Kromm is the father of winger Rich Kromm, who played 370 games with the Calgary Flames and New York Islanders.
Kromm coached the Trail Smoke Eaters in 1961 when they won the Allan Cup and advanced to the world championship in Geneva. The Smoke Eaters defeated Russia and the rest of the world to become the last Canadian amateur team to win the world championship.
Kromm led the NHL’s Red Wings from 1977-78 to 1980. The team’s 32-34-14 record and its second-place Norris Division finish and playoff appearance in his first season earned him the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year.
The B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame lists Kromm’s playing and coaching career as lasting 30 years in four leagues.
Once in Detroit, he fired up the Red Wings and after a second-place finish in 1978, he was selected NHL coach of the year, beating out Montreal’s Scotty Bowman and Boston’s Don Cherry. He was also chosen to serve on the coaching staff of the Canadian team at the 1976 Canada Cup, along with Cherry, Bowman and Al MacNeil.
The Wings missed the playoffs the next two years and Kromm was fired and replaced by Ted Lindsay.
He is survived by his wife Geraldine, two sons and two daughters.
— The Associated Press, with files from Gary Lawless