One evening in November 1926, a brand new hockey team skated out on the ice of Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. First was stocky, mournful-looking Bun Cook, who superstitiously insists on touching the ice before his teammates. Behind him glided his pugnacious Brother Bill, team captain, with whom he owns a big wheat farm in Saskatchewan, big, bald, grinning Ivan Wilfred ("Ching") Johnson, slender Frank Boucher, and a youngster named Murray Murdoch. With a few other teammates they made up the New York Rangers. They played that night against the Montreal Maroons.
One night last week these same five players stood under a...