During World War II many former NHL players who had joined the armed forces wound up on such Canadian service teams such as the Ottawa Commandos and HMS York out of Toronto.
For example, Sugar Jim Henry, who starred on the Blueshirts 1941-42 first place team, played goal for the Commandos. Stateside, the Rangers 1940 Cup captain Art Coulter joined the Coast Guard and starred for the Cutters sextet out of Baltimore.
But nobody – with the very possible exception of your Maven – is old enough to know that Uncle Sam also had a U.S. Navy hockey team that called old Madison Square Garden home.
The sailors were based at the Brooklyn waterfront, where all the Liberty Ships docked before crossing the Atlantic. They were delivering supplies to Britain, France or the Soviet Union.
Since American military rules stated that every merchant vessel had to be armed with one big gun, that's where the U.S. came into the picture.
The artillery piece had to be manned – not by a Merchant Mariner – but by the U.S. Navy men. The overall name of their unit was "U.S. Naval Armed Guard Gunners."
In the fall of 1943, there were enough competent hockey players at the Brooklyn base for a team to be organized. Navy man Stan Saplin – later to become Rangers' publicist in 1946 – managed the Armed Guard team.
"We got approval from (Rangers executive) Tommy Lockhart to be the fourth team in MSG's Met League," Saplin recalled. "The Gunners played against the Sands Point Tigers, Manhattan Arrows and Jamaica Hawks.
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"The games were played on Sunday afternoons as the first half of a double header. Then came the Rovers and their Eastern Amateur Hockey League opponents. All things considered, the Armed Guard guys played before big Garden crowds."
The Gunners finished last in the Met League and then – because of the U.S. Naval obligations – they had to go off to war.
"Our guys had little time to practice because of the Navy duties they had to fulfill," said Saplin. "But they gave it their all and we had some fine players; best of all was a forward named Red Rafter, who had previously played in the Met League."
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The only NHLer in the Naval Armed Guard was Chicago Black Hawks' goalie Sam LoPresti. He became a hero in 1943 and I'll have his story here tomorrow.)