With all the fuss, fanfare and honoring now that we’re approaching the Rangers‘ Centennial Season it’s apparent that the planners and historians forgot something.
The New York Americans.
Were it not for the Amerks, the Rangers never would have existed. Here’s why:
When – in 1925 – the third MSG was being finished on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets its empresario Tex Rickard was more interested in boxing and six-day bike racing than ice hockey. They didn’t even have ice-making in the original Garden plans.
But Rickard was friendly with a Canadian – Bill McBeth – who wrote for the New York Herald-Tribune and Buck convinced Tex that he should take in an NHL game in Montreal just to see what he was missing.
Montreal Canadiens ace Howie Morenz was “The Babe Ruth Of Hockey” at the time and the dazzling skating of Morenz and the rest of the Flying Frenchmen so enthused Rickard that he made sure that the new MSG installed ice-making.
Now all The Garden needed was a team and here’s where Rickard got lucky. The NHL’s best team in the regular 1924-25 season was the Hamilton Tigers. But just before playoff time the Tigers’ players went on strike for more playoff dough.
Ownership would not cave and instead put the Tigers up for sale and New York’s biggest bootlegger Big Bill Dwyer got the team, skaters, sticks and an NHL franchise for the 1925-26 season. True to form – and a patriot to the core – Dwyer named his new toy the New York Americans.
With its brand new tenant, The Garden went out of its way to insure that pro hockey’s debut in The Big Apple was a big success on opening night December 15, 1925.
“In an era of biplanes and skyscrapers, Rickard’s ice palace was a marvel,” wrote Joshua Casper in The Hockey News. “It was the biggest arena in the world. Even the skeptical Canadian press conceded that hockey gave jaded New Yorkers a thrill.”
But Rickard was nervous. “Tex worried himself into a ghost of a man,” said Buck McBeth.
Casper added: “If pro hockey failed in New York, MSG would forever be Rickard’s folly.”
And here’s the angle; had it failed there would be no need for a second team. But the Amerks excited New York’s sporting crowd and Big Bill Dwyer’s team was an MSG hit.
So much of a hit that the Garden decided that it should own its own NHL team to compete with and against Dwyer’s Americans.
A year later the Rangers were born — and the Blueshirts can thank the Amerks for that.
The Maven’s question is this: Will the Rangers celebrating its Centennial Season, say one kind work about the Amerks?
Likely not and I’ll tell you why:
In 1942 the Americans roster – operated by former Amerk defenseman Red Dutton – was riddled by World War II enlistments; so much so that Dutton got permission from the NHL for his team to take leave of absence for the duration of the war. The league promised Dutton could return after the conflict ended; as it did in 1945.
When hostilities were over, Dutton reapplied for membership and who do you think turned this down?
Your beloved Rangers, that’s who.
So don’t expect a peep during the Centennial about the franchise that made the Blueshirts possible!
Hockey News