Ken Laufman

Kenneth "Ken" Laufman was a Canadian ice hockey centre who represented his country at two Winter Olympics, winning bronze at Cortina d'Ampezzo in 1956 and silver at Squaw Valley in 1960 with the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen. He died on September 14, 2026, in the Vancouver, Washington, area at the age of 94.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, on January 30, 1932, Laufman came of age when Canada's Olympic hockey teams were still drawn from senior amateur clubs rather than the National Hockey League. The Dutchmen carried the maple leaf in 1956 and again in 1960, and Laufman centered both medal-winning squads, a rare double that tied his name to the last great amateur era of Canadian Olympic hockey.

The 1956 Games in Italy placed Canada against a rising Soviet program that would dominate world hockey for decades. Canada took bronze. Four years later, on California ice, Laufman and the Dutchmen earned silver while the United States captured gold in one of the sport's landmark Olympic tournaments. Those results framed Laufman's international legacy: steady at centre through two Olympic cycles when wearing the national jersey still meant leaving club pay for amateur duty.

Between the Games he built a long trail through North American junior, senior, and minor-pro hockey. Rosters list the Guelph Biltmores, Halifax Atlantics, Johnstown Jets, and Portland Buckaroos among his stops. He played 54 games in the Ontario Hockey Association, 132 in the Eastern Hockey League, and 83 in the Western Hockey League of that period, the kind of mileage that defined careers before free agency and modern player movement.

In later life he was associated with the Pacific Northwest. A Legacy.com notice recorded his death at 94 on September 14, 2026. Olympedia and Wikipedia preserve the competitive outline for readers who meet him first through an Olympic medal table: Hamilton beginnings, two Olympic medals, and a centre's craft practiced from Canadian rinks to U.S. minor-league towns.

Laufman's story is also a reminder of how Canadian hockey identity once traveled. Club teams became national teams; centres like him bridged hometown junior systems and the global Olympic stage. He lived long enough to see NHL professionals enter Olympic hockey, a change that makes his 1956 and 1960 medals part of a closed chapter. Those who catalog Dutchmen alumni still find his name among the Olympians who kept Canada on the podium at the turn of the 1960s.