NHL in New York: MSG’s First National Hockey League Team
A lot of people that find their way to this website are either young kids learning the game of hockey or people that want to become embedded in the chaos and carnage that is the NHL. When you have a team that is as storied as the New York Rangers, sometimes it is difficult to imagine what the league was like before them. While the Rangers remain one of the most storied teams in the NHL, they were not Madison Square Garden’s first team.
That honor belongs to the New York Americans. To explain how they came into existence, we need to go back to before the formation of the Americans and actually head north of the border to Hamilton, Ontario. It was the Hamilton Tigers that would fund the resources into New York that would give the Rangers predecessors the ability to lay the groundwork for one of the best hockey markets in the world.
Hamilton got the franchise after the Quebec Bulldogs were sold and the team was moved. After a very successful 1925-26 season, the players wanted more pay and a strike occurred. While there was some pushback and struggle, eventually New York’s own Tom Duggan and Bill Dwyer agreed to pay the players’ contracts. It should be noted that this was just the players, not the franchise. The Americans were an expansion team in that regard while the Tigers were expelled.
So, the New York Americans entered the league, becoming the 2nd team in the USA after the Boston Bruins. The infamous red, white, and blue of the star-spangled banner served as the inspiration for their attire and became iconic as the Americans came to be. They served as the premier voyage into the great city of New York for the NHL. They’d play their home games at the original garden, but would it be successful?
The NHL Years
As the NHL continued to try and move south out of Canada, New York presented one of its biggest challenges. Despite being somewhat ridiculously obvious in America as you would guess by being called the New York Americans, the NHL put them in the Canadian division. Why? Well, let’s just say that this was almost 100 years ago and they still use the same kind of logic today. Anyway, this meant a ton of trips north.
With Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto all being in the league and plane travel at the time being less than accessible for the common man, it meant that they would have to travel by train. This made it quite hard on the Amerks in their first season in the big time. It’s part of the reason that a team that had been so successful in Hamilton had 12 wins, 24 losses, and 4 ties in their first season in New York.
Despite the poor showing on the ice, they were a booming success drawing large crowds towards the games at the Garden. New York had been a great success for the hockey world and has been part of the lifeblood of the NHL ever since. It was an awful season for the team, but hockey at the Garden was born. Fans loved the sport so much, that Madison Square Garden itself wanted a team of its own.
While the Americans were using the Garden’s facilities, they were not owned by MSG. It was simply a rental agreement. When they saw how successful this was, the owners wanted a piece. They had inserted a clause into the agreement to rent MSG that said that the Garden could do anything it needed to bring another team. It made the Americans ownership annoyed, but there was nothing to argue about. Thus, the New York Rangers were born.
The off-ice struggles
As the team continued to get beaten around by the Canadian teams, fans were starting to jump ship. In the 1928 season, the New York Rangers had won the Stanley Cup in just their second year as a franchise. It meant that there was a winner in the city, its owners were secure and rich, and they would be certain of their position in the city for many years as opposed to the group acquired from Hamilton.
For the Americans, it all started to hit home. Dwyer was a bootlegger during the prohibition times, so the way in which he made his fortune would have to change when the law did. It meant that American ownership was suddenly very unstable, and in 1936, they were on the market again looking for a new owner. Except, with the debts building up, and even when they made the playoffs for the first time, there were no takers.
When the team was abandoned by Dwyer, the league took control. Trying to preserve a team that it saw so much potential in made sense, but it annoyed Dwyer who saw no reason the league should have intervened. When Dwyer filed a lawsuit, an agreement came to be that the NHL would relinquish control back to the Amerks owner if he could pay off the club’s debts in a certain time frame. He didn’t, leaving the franchise in purgatory.
With seemingly no direction, the NHL asked then-head coach Red Dutton to take control of the franchise with the financial backing of the league, and in the 1937-38 season, the Americans were very much in trouble. They had no stable foothold in the league, and the team was struggling. Despite beating the Rangers in the playoffs that year, there was only further trouble ahead for the Amerks.
In 1939, the second world war started, and it saw a large contingent of Canadian players head home for deployment. A depleted roster and crippling debts saw the writing on the wall for the franchise. With the best players being forced out the door for money just to try and keep the sinking ship above the waves for a few more days, Dutton was trying everything to just survive.
Brooklyn Americans
As the war raged on ahead of the 1941-42 season, Red Dutton announced that the team was going to be renamed the Brooklyn Americans with the intent of moving to Brooklyn. This was an attempt to find a new market that was going to be loyal to the team and keep the franchise operating during the bad financial times that had stricken them so much. It was not a good situation.
When no arena was found before the season, they played it out at Madison Square Garden. It was a close call as to whether or not the franchise would make it to the end of the season, but they did so finishing bottom of the standings yet again. This would be the last time we’d see the Americans on the ice as the franchise announced that they would be suspending operations until the conclusion of the second world war.
Skipping ahead to the end of the war in 1945, Dutton came back looking to resume operations, but the league expelled the franchise. Officially, the history books have the Americans as retiring from the NHL in 1942, despite the organization having every intention to return to the league. It broke several promises that the NHL had made to the organization, and this was probably done under pressure from Madison Square Garden and the Rangers.
In their 17 years in existence, the Americans had a record of 255 wins, 402 losses, and 127 ties for 637 points. You can see a lot of why they struggled. People enjoy winning and the feeling of being victorious. A losing franchise in a city with a team that saw so much success early in existence with the Rangers didn’t really have the chance to survive or thrive. This in particular made Red Dutton quite the angry man.
The Curse and Legacy
Dutton was enraged by Madison Square Garden putting that pressure on the league to not reinstate the Americans, he swore that the New York Rangers would never win another championship in his lifetime. While this curse isn’t as well known as one such as the Curse of the Bambino in the MLB, this was a very real curse itself.
Red Dutton passed away on March 15th, 1987 and the Rangers did not win another Stanley Cup in his lifetime. It would not be until Mark Messier’s promise in 1994 that the New York Rangers would reach the summit of the hockey world once again, 52 years after the New York Americans’ final season in the league and 7 years after Dutton’s death. For a franchise that had once rapid success year after year to have just one cup since 1940 isn’t a lot, but to some “this one will last a lifetime.”
After the Americans left the NHL, the league would not expand again until the infamous expansion of 1967. This gave birth to what we know today as the original six-era. Six teams made up the NHL. Your New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks, and Detroit Red Wings. Six teams with a unique and storied history, and it’s where the term “Original Six” comes from for those new to hockey.
New York would not see a second team in the city until 1972-73 when the Islanders came into existence in Uniondale. But, unlike the Americans, the Islanders would eventually actually find themselves in Brooklyn for a couple of years as they sorted out their new and current home at Belmont Park.
While the Americans didn’t bring much to the league, there is something they did. In a game against the Bruins, the Americans dumped the puck the length of the ice 67 times. That annoyed the Bruins owner so much that the next time the two teams met, the Bruins dumped the puck the length of the rink 81 times. These two games are where we get the icing rule that is still used today.
With that, the chapter of the NHL on the New York Americans came to an end. It’s somewhat insane to think that a team that came to be almost 100 years ago is the reason why the great city of New York has one of the most iconic franchises in the hockey world. While they are not on the ice anymore, there is no denying that the Americans continue to affect the league to this day.