It’s a big year for hockey in Brooklyn. The borough is getting two professional hockey teams. The New York Islanders move to Barclays Center, and the New York Riveters of the newly formed National Women’s Hockey League—the first professional women’s hockey league in North America—take up residence at Aviator Sports.
However, these are not the first professional hockey teams to make Brooklyn their home, even if the Brooklyn Americans only partially delivered on their promise of a Brooklyn hockey team in 1941. For a single, mostly forgotten season, Brooklyn had an NHL club: the Brooklyn Americans. The story of the Amerks, as fans called them, involves a famous bootlegger, the first NHL players’ strike and a heated rivalry between two New York-based NHL squads forced to acrimoniously share an arena.
It’s a story highlighted at the Brooklyn Historical Society’s new exhibit “Brooklyn Americans: Hockey’s Forgotten Promise.” Marcia Ely, VP of Programs and External Affairs at the BHS says that the return of pro hockey to Brooklyn delivers on “a promise made over 70 years ago.” And that long-ago promise starts with the famous prohibition era bootlegger William Dwyer, who, instead of spending his money on fur coats, nightclubs and the accoutrement of mob life, bought sports teams. (Some of the other stuff too, surely.)
In the 1924-25 season, the NHL’s Hamilton Tigers started the year 10-4-1, the best start in franchise history. It was the first legitimate shot they had at winning the Stanley Cup since moving to Ontario in 1920. At least, until a wage dispute between players and management broke out at the end of the regular season. With both sides at a stalemate, the league suspended the players, and Hamilton was disqualified from the playoffs. Bootlegger William Dwyer got involved and bought the team in the summer of 1925 for $75,000, after which he increased the players’ pay, renamed them the New York Americans and moved them to the newly built Madison Square Garden (its third incarnation).
The 1925-26 New York Americans
The inaugural season was such a success that Tex Rickard, renowned promoter and builder of Madison Square Garden, used a loophole in his contract with Dwyer to his advantage and helped found another team that would call the Garden home. In 1926, due to the lack of a non-compete clause in Rickard’s contract with Dwyer, the New York Rangers entered the NHL.
Tex Rickard. Photo: Bain News Service / Library of Congress
The Americans and Rangers were instant rivals.
But Rickard and his new team, the Rangers, weren’t happy sharing the arena. The Rangers stood to make more money as the only team for New Yorkers, and Madison Square Garden stood to make more money renting out the arena for other events.
To add to their difficulties, the Americans were having financial struggles. Dwyer’s legal troubles mounted, and he found himself unable to pay off his debts. The NHL stepped in and took control of the nearly destitute team, naming future Hall of Famer Red Dutton, as the team’s new leader and coach. Dutton was a popular player who had been in the NHL for 10 years, playing six seasons with the Amerks. He began coaching in the 1935-36 season, while he was still playing, and then retired from playing the following season to focus on coaching.
Red Dutton
In an effort to alleviate the team’s financial struggles and growing tensions with Rickard, Dutton launched a plan to move the team to Brooklyn in 1939 with the first season in Brooklyn slated for 1941. Dutton hoped it would reinvigorate both their finances and a restless fanbase who just watched the team win eight of 48 games the season prior.
But the stadium was not to be, despite the fact that Dutton personally arranged for $7 million in financing for a new stadium. The outbreak of World War II meant that steel wasn’t available for the building of a new arena, and a new home would have to wait until after the war.
Nonetheless, Dutton re-christened the team the Brooklyn Americans in advance of the 1941-42 season. For Dutton, it wasn’t a dog and pony show, he wanted the team to be a genuine Brooklyn team. “Brooklyn” replaced “New York” on the team’s sweaters and he moved his family to Brooklyn, encouraging his players to do the same. But with no rink in place, the Brooklyn Americans are Brooklyn’s first pro hockey team with an asterisk. They practiced at the Brooklyn Ice Palace, but were forced to continue calling Madison Square Garden home.
The move to Brooklyn was something of a failure. The team didn’t play in Brooklyn, their financial woes continued and the on-ice product didn’t improve, with the team going 16-29-8. That record meant the Amerks missed the playoffs for the second straight year in a seven-team league where six teams made the playoffs.
Coupled with losing some of their best players to enlistment in World War II during the offseason, the NHL—who still had control of the team—decided to disband the team, leaving Brooklyn’s professional hockey legacy a single-season affair without any home games actually taking place in Brooklyn.
Soon, not only will Brooklyn have a hockey team, but it will have two, making up for more than half a century of lost time in the borough.
