Honestly, I can't see NY making two teams work during the great depression. I'd say the Americans making it through doom the Rangers.
*shudders* Now that's dark timeline
More seriously, this one was a terrible idea and the NHL dodged a bullet when they didn't do it, Montreal is just a massively superior Hockey market to Cleveland. I would expect Cleveland to go under soon enough (Great Depression plus not terrible but also not great Hockey market) and MTL making it back to the NHL sooner or later. I also feel that how close it came to happen is probably overestimated sometimes, as the rumours happened when the Maroons where about at the peak of their popularity when the rumours happened, which was not really sustainable for the cultural reasons I mentionned earlier in the thread.