HOOLIGAN’S NAVY
A STAR-STUDDED GROUP OF SERVICEMEN MADE WAVES ON THE ICE, RATHER THAN THE SEA, DURING WORLD WAR II
The stories of NHL stars like Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart leaving their teams to join the Canadian services during World War II are engrained in hockey lore.
But many of the day’s top stars chose to serve in the American forces as well. And thanks to a hockey-loving of cer, several of them joined together to form one of the most formidable teams of the era.
Looking back at it now, the two-year experiment known as the Coast Guard Cutters featured a mind boggling aggregation of talent, including a pair of future Hockey Hall of Famers and ve U.S. Hockey Hall of Famers. Little wonder then that the Cutters won the National Senior Open Championship of the Amateur Hockey Association in each of their two seasons of play (1942-43 and 1943-44), as well as the Eastern Amateur Hockey League title in 1942-43.
The club was the brainchild of Coast Guard Capt. Clifford MacLean, a former player who recognized an opportunity to replace the Baltimore Orioles, an EAHL club that was forced to fold as its players enlisted in the military. He recruited players from across the pro and amateur ranks with an eye on building the best team outside of the NHL. He dressed them in spectacular, star-spangled sweaters with a crossed anchor logo, and enlisted a 30-piece marching band to regale them with Semper Paratus, the Coast Guard marching song, after every goal.
Every game was a scene, but the focus was always on the ice. The star of the squad was Minnesotan Frank Brimsek. The goaltender known as Mr. Zero came to the Cutters having earned ve consecutive First or Second Team NHL All-Star berths, along with a pair of Vezinas and two Stanley Cup rings, as the starting goalie for the Boston Bruins. If he wasn’t the best goalie in the world at that time, he wasn’t far from it.
Winnipeg-born defenseman Art Coulter was a fourtime All-Star who helped the Chicago Black Hawks hoist their rst Stanley Cup in 1933-34 and later captained the New York Rangers to a Cup win in 1939-40. Coincidentally, he assumed the C from Bill Cook, whose younger brother, Bud, skated alongside Coulter for the Cutters.
The team also featured defenseman John Mariucci, a
legend of Minnesota hockey who skated with the Chicago Black Hawks both before and after the war, as well as NHLers Bob Dill, Alex Motter, Ossie Asmundson and Ed Barry. A youngster named Eddie Olson also suited up for the Cutters a decade before he would win a pair of scoring titles, an MVP nod and two Calder Cups with the AHL’s Cleveland Barons.
A reporter gave them the nickname “Hooligan’s Navy,” borrowing a term used at the time to describe the small eet of sailing yachts conscripted to patrol the American East Coast on constant watch for German U-boats. Like those boats, the Cutters employed their share of roughnecks, which made for some entertaining hockey and drew capacity crowds to Baltimore’s Carlin’s Iceland, as well as rinks in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
Things weren’t only wild on the ice. Hockey historian Stan Fischler revealed that shortly after the Cutters won the 1943 Walker Cup at Madison Square Garden, the trophy symbolic of the title was stolen during the course of the post-game celebration. It wasn’t gone for long. Just a few days later, New York Rangers coach Lester Patrick happened upon it in a pawn shop just blocks from the arena. The Blueshirts courteously shipped it to the team’s headquarters at Curtis Bay, allowing them to defend their title, and reclaim the trophy, the following year.
Despite their on-ice success, the organization was quickly scuttled by off-ice criticism. Families whose sons were putting their lives on the line in combat were furious that these servicemen were allowed to stay home and play hockey. Faced with this pressure, the team folded in 1944.
Before they did though, 28 members of the Cutters, including Brimsek, Coulter and Mariucci, signed this original 11 X 14 studio photograph by shot by F. Paul Feder (as identi ed by a stamp on the back). The signatures on the photo are generally strong and legible, making for a Hall of Fame-caliber piece. And yet, it sold on eBay recently for just $699.99 – a re ection, perhaps of the team’s faded spot in hockey history...something, hopefully, we’ve changed here.
(This story was sourced from the March 28, 1983 issue of The Commandant’s Bulletin.)