Noting only that we've asked some pretty dimwitted questions on Net54 and have almost always gotten informative and courteous answers,
we just pay it forward here and hope we're not held in contempt for doing so...
Our hockey historian colleagues confirm our suspicions with much more detail than we had. The photo is indeed of the Rangers --
the Massachusetts Rangers, also known as Boston Olympics.
Michael (above) was close, but it's 1932-33, not 1931. Rangers/Olympics represented the USA at the 1933 World Championship
in Prague, so this is in the winter of 1932/33. The rink is indeed somewhere in the Alps -- the team played some warm-up games in
the Swiss towns of St-Moritz, Davos, and Arosa, and in Chamonix, France.
The coach is Walter Brown, founder of the Boston Celtics. He went on to own the Boston Bruins from 1951-1964,
and was president of the IIHF between 1954-1957.
The goaltender is Gerry Cosby, who went on to own the famous hockey equipment store. In the five games played
in the actual tournament, Cosby allowed only one goal — to Canada in the gold medal game.
A few of the other players had been on the 1932 Lake Placid Olympic team. Almost all of them had played college hockey
for Yale, Dartmouth, or Boston College, along with one Harvard player. Cosby was the only one who didn't play collegiate hockey.
This is the only American team to win the IIHF World Championship. In the gold-medal game, they handed Canada
its first loss in international competition. To this day the Americans have won only four international world titles at the senior level:
the '60 and '80 Olympics, both at home; the '96 World Cup at Montreal; and this team's '33 World Championship at Prague.
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