The venerable hockey equipment manufacturer became the league’s official skate on this date in 1970
The venerable hockey equipment manufacturer became the league’s official skate on this date in 1970
When people remember the long-defunct California Golden Seals, one of the most ridiculous remembrances of the failed NHL franchise was that the players wore white skates for a few years in the 1970s.
What they don’t remember is that the Seals weren’t the only NHL team to wear colored skates; they’re just the only ones who stuck with the novelty.
The NHL announced on this date in 1970 that Bauer would become the league’s official skate. As part of that promotion, Bauer was coming out with colored skates for four of the NHL’s 14 teams and would have a set ready for a fifth team by Christmas.
Previously, the league frowned upon skates that would stand out from the norm. Derek Sanderson of the Boston Bruins had reportedly sought permission to wear white skates, but NHL president Clarence Campbell vetoed his request. Campbell later said he had no problem with colored skates, only with the individuality. If an entire team were to wear them, he said, that would be okay.
The new Bauer skates were thus designed to match the teams’ uniforms and the Los Angeles Kings, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the St. Louis Blues, and the Oakland Seals – they were renamed a month later – were the guinea pigs. The Kings’ skates were to be gold with purple trim, the Seals would have gold and green skates, the Penguins would wear double-blue and white, and the Blues would have blue with gold trim. The Detroit Red Wings would be the fifth team and would have red skates.
Newspaper archives show that the guinea pigs did proceed as planned, but there is no indication the Red Wings followed suit. Most of the teams went back to black relatively quickly, but because the Seals stuck with the idea and later switched to white skates, they’re the ones that people remember, and not charitably. (It certainly doesn’t help that they were a lousy and ill-fated team that moved to Cleveland in 1976 and disappeared altogether two years later.)
Bauer’s role in this development has been downplayed, but the company had been innovating since its founder, Roy Bauer, invented hockey skates as we know them today in 1930. A shoemaker born near Elmwood, a farming community in Grey County, Ont., Bauer learned his trade in Kitchener and went out on his own by starting the Bauer Shoe Company in that city in 1922. Three years later, he bought out one of his local competitors, the Western Shoe Company, and moved into its location on what is now Victoria Street North. (It was merely Victoria Street then, with no directional designation.)
Bauer was an inventor as well as a craftsman. Prior to 1930, skate buyers had to purchase a “skating outfit” of boots and blades separately, then have them attached together – sometimes, but not always, at the same store. Bauer said in an interview with the Kitchener-Waterloo Record in 1956 that his wife had gone shopping one day to buy skates for their son, Gerald, “and came home complaining about the inconvenience she had suffered from having to trot all over town.” Bauer then wondered if it would be possible to build skates at Western Shoe as one pre-assembled unit. When he realized that it was, he suddenly found himself with an entirely new sideline.
The Bauers’ other son, Donald, wrote in an internally published company history in the mid 1970s that the first step in the process had been to buy blades from a major producer of that item, the Starr Manufacturing Company of Dartmouth, N.S. Once Roy Bauer determined that his idea would work, he bought a two-year supply of blades from Starr, and he also began planning to be able to manufacture his own blades when that supply ran out. By the end of 1931, “the famous Bauer hockey outfits” were being marketed across Canada, indicating immediate and wide customer acceptance of the idea. “Bauer Hockey Boots With Excellent Tube Skates Securely Riveted On. COMPLETE,” read one newspaper advertisement of the time, emphasizing the novelty of being able to buy a skating outfit in this way.
According to Don Bauer’s company history, his father’s plan to produce his own blades came to fruition by 1933, and by then he had become aware that there would be a significant cost of production that could only be justified with a high volume of output. Bauer accomplished this by arranging to supply blades to other shoe factories in Canada and the U.S. In May 1934, the Canada Skate Manufacturing Company was incorporated with a capitalization of $80,000, and later that year Bauer moved the operation into a new factory next door to Western Shoe in Kitchener.
Canada Skate quickly came to dominate the Canadian export market for skates, but Roy Bauer took care of his local market too by becoming involved in hockey in Kitchener, where he eventually operated the city’s Junior B franchise during the 1940s. Hockey also brought a deep personal connection when his daughter Marguerite married Boston Bruins star Bobby Bauer, a Waterloo native. Bobby not only became Canada Skate’s first NHL endorser – the company’s Bobby Bauer Special model was a popular line for many years starting in the late 1940s – his help in developing that skate paved the way for him to join the company after he retired from the NHL. As a production manager, Bobby worked alongside his brothers-in-law, Gerry, who was the plant manager, and Don, who was head of sales and marketing.
Roy Bauer sold his companies to Greb Shoes Limited, also of Kitchener, in 1965. Bauer was operated as a separate division after the sale, and it was under the direction of Gerry and Don Bauer that a new flagship model, the Bauer Supreme, was developed and successfully introduced in 1966. Don, a high-level hockey player in his own right – he played for two Allan Cup championship teams in Kitchener in 1953 and 1955 – began to promote Bauer skates at the NHL level and managed to sign superstar celebrity endorsers like Bobby Hull and Bobby Orr prior to facilitating the agreement with the NHL that was signed on this date in 1970.
Gerry left the company in 1969 but Don remained with Bauer and Greb until 1979. Roy Bauer, the founder who changed hockey skate manufacturing forever, retired after selling his companies and died in May 1989 at age 93.
Disclaimer: W. Graeme Roustan, the owner and publisher of The Hockey News, is a former chairman of Bauer