Unless the league changes its rules regarding player selection, Armand 'Bep" Guidolin's name will live forever in the record books as the youngest man to ever play in an NHL game. After a stellar junior career with the Oshawa Generals that culminated with a Memorial Cup victory in the spring of 1942, the left winger started the next campaign as a member of the Boston Bruins, a team stripped of its major offensive threat when the entire Kraut Line enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces. The 1942-43 season started a month before the youngster from Thorald, Ontario turned 17.

Replacing the Kraut line of Schmidt, Dumart and Bauer, all household names the youthful Sprout Line. Bill Shill, Don Gallinger and Bep Guidolin were household names too, but only around their families' kitchen tables. Guidolin had a reasonable good rookie campaign, picking up seven goals and fifteen assists and adding four more helpers in the postseason as the Bruins made it to the finals only to be swept by Detroit.

Coming into his own the next season, Guidolin upped his production to 42 points on 17 goals and 25 assists, capably handling first line duties in the depleted NHL. Finally old enough for military service, he missed the 1943-44 schedule serving his country. Never seeing action, he spent the year in Toronto, finding time to suit up with a number of military teams in local defence leagues.

As players who had served in World War II returned, some reclaimed their jobs, others didn’t. Guidolin won on both counts. He was both a replacement player who continued to play in the postwar NHL and a returning veteran able to dislodge a wartime replacement.

With the Krauts back in full flight, the Sprouts were related to second line status, but managed to make the most of their plight. Gallinger led the 1945-46 team in scoring with 40 points and Guidolin’s 15 goals and 17 assists placed him third.

Traded to Detroit to start the 1947-48 season, Guidolin was assigned to more defensive duties but still managed to hit double figures with a dozen goals. A year later he was a member of the Chicago Blackhawks, the Norris family’s second-string NHL club.

Guidolin was back on the first line again and made the most of it, enjoying some of his most productive seasons while in the Windy City. In 1949-50 he scored 17 times and assisted on 34 other goals, his career high.

The 1951-52 season was Guidolin’s last in the NHL as the 25 year-old with nine solid seasons of tough two-way play was demoted to the AHL’s Syracuse Warriors and ended the season with the Ottawa Senators in the Quebec Senior Hockey League. Many observes felt that Guidolin’s banishment had more to do with his sympathy towards a proposed players association than any deterioration in his skills.

He won an Allan Cup to go along with his Memorial as a member of the 1957-58 Belleville McFarlands and hung up his skates after spending the 1960-61 season in the IHL.

Heading back to Ontario and moving behind the bench, starting with the Windsor Spitfires. He took over the reins of the Oshawa Generals the next season and came within a game of winning the Memorial Cup in 1966. Superstar Bobby Orr moved on to the Bruins the next year and Guidolin moved on too. He finished his junior coaching years with two years in Kitchener and found himself back in Boston.

After guiding the AHL Braves to a first-place tie in 1970-71 there was only one step left on the climb back to the NHL. Fifty-two games into the next season, Tom Johnson was out and Bep Guidolin was in. The Bruins won 20 of the last 26 games on the schedule and finished second to Montreal in the Eastern Division.

The following year the Bruins, with one of the strongest lineups in team history, won over 50 games and made it through to the finals where they were bested by Montreal.

Wearing out his welcome in Boston, Guidolin, who sometimes rubbed the wrong people the wrong way was replaced by a career minor-leaguer by the name of Don Cherry who, despite being somewhat abrasive himself from time to time, became the most popular coach the Bruins have ever seen.

In 1974-75 the NHL saw fit to award Kansas City a franchise. Sid Abel was the team’s first GM. He made Guidolin the first coach of the team now called the New Jersey Devils. There were no Orrs or Espositos on the mighty Kansas City Scouts and the expansion team won only 15 games in it’s initial season and a mere dozen the next, although Guidolin didn’t finish the season with the team, replaced by Abel and then by Eddie Bush.

He was GM and coach of the WHA Edmonton Oilers in 1976-77, relinquishing, the coaching reins to his surprised captain, Glen Sather, in the dying days of the season before being let go himself at the conclusion of play.

Returning to the junior ranks he spent the first part of the 1981-82 season directing the Brantford Alexanders of the OHA, and retired from the game ending more than 40 years in high-level hockey, all in all a pretty good run for a teenage phenom that wasn’t expected to last more than a couple NHL seasons.