Known for his fiery temper, Coutu was once given 42 penalty minutes in a 1923 playoff game against the Ottawa Senators, still a record to this day.

Billy Coutu's last name is sometimes incorrectly spelled "Couture", an error which appears in many NHL history books and, for a time, even showed up on the Montreal Canadiens website.

Coutu's brother, Louis, was a trapper, who in 1928 discovered a message in a bottle from a survivor of the shipwreck of the SS Kamloops.

After the 1925–26 NHL season, Coutu was deemed expendable and traded to the Boston Bruins in exchange for defenceman Amby Moran who ultimately played just 12 games for the Canadiens.

[4] He never played in the NHL again, although the lifetime ban was lifted in 1929–30 and Coutu was reinstated in 1932–33 at the insistence of Canadiens owner Leo Dandurand.