Coast Guard Cutters were toast of amateur league, forced to disband to serve in World War II

Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his humor and insight with readers each Wednesday.

This week helps celebrate the 80th anniversary of America's only World War II armed forces hockey club. The Coast Guard Cutters completed two championship seasons in the Eastern Amateur Hockey League (1943 and '44). Then, eight decades ago, the Cutters were forced to disband as the sailors embarked for war zones in the Pacific and Western Europe.

On the ice, the United States Coast Guard hockey team was near invincible. Stacked with former NHL stars like goalie Frank Brimsek and defenseman Art Coulter, eventual Hockey Hall of Famers, the Baltimore-based sextet won national championships in each of its two seasons. The Coast Guard Cutters also twice won the Walker Cup, emblematic of the Eastern Amateur Hockey League title.

"We would have won a third in a row," said New York Rangers forward prospect and Brooklyn native Mike Nardello, "but by the fall of '44 our guys were doing what we were trained for -- fighting for Uncle Sam."

By this time 80 years ago, Nardello, Chicago Black Hawks defenseman John Mariucci, Rangers center Ossie Asmundson and Detroit Red Wings defenseman Alex Motter, among others, traded in their hockey sticks and headed for the Pacific Theater.

Before their departures, the Cutters, who had trained in the Coast Guard's Baltimore Yard at Curtis Bay, were the toast of the EAHL.

"They fought -- and I mean hockey fighting -- as well as they played," said New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young. "They were so rough and ready, I called them 'Hooligan's Navy.'"

When they played the Rangers' EAHL farm team, the New York Rovers, at Madison Square Garden, recall it being as much a festive occasion as it was a hockey game. The Cutters were accompanied by their 30-piece band and when the Sailors scored, the band swung into a chorus of "Semper Paratus" (Always Ready), the Coast Guard's marching song.

Coulter, captain of the Rangers' 1940 Stanley Cup-winning team, and defenseman Bob Dill, a former boxer, were among the more intimidating Cutters. Former Rangers general manager Emile "The Cat" Francis remembered playing against the skating sailors when Cat was goalie for the Philadelphia Falcons.

"Those Cutters blended skill with the kind of toughness you'd expect from NHL guys like Mariucci and Coulter," Francis said. "What's more, their roster included some of the best players out of Minnesota, Michigan and New England who were real good but never made the majors.

Wrote Young: "Their Hub Nelson was considered 'The Best Goalie Not in the NHL' and their third goalie, Muzz Murray, won a couple of games at The Garden."

The brainchild of a former Michigan hockey star-turned Coast Guard commander, Lt. Cmdr. C.R. MacLean, the Cutters clinched their first title, the Walker Cup, at Madison Square Garden in 1943 and received the prize from former New York mayor Jimmy Walker

After they captured the American Senior crown in 1944, sayonara became the byword for the seamen.

"We already were losing players to the war late in our second season." Nardello recalled, "and by the end of '44 there were no hockey players left at our base. The fact is, we had done enough fighting on the ice; it was time to do our fighting where it counted -- against our real enemies!"