He was 25 in 1918 when he signed up to go to the war with the Fort Garry Horse, 5-foot-8-and-a-quarter, according to his army Attestation Papers. His eyes were hazel, his hair was dark, his complexion fresh. He was Single and Presbyterian. And while Dick Irvin told the Canadian Expeditionary Force in that last year of war that his Trade or Calling was Salesman and Butcher, he was also an accomplished hockey player who’d already played a year as a professional centreman with the PCHA Portland Rosebuds. Irvin, who died at the age of 64 on a Thursday of this date in 1957, may be best remembered nowadays as an NHL coach, winner of four Stanley Cups, but he was counted as one of the best players of his generation, too, in his day. The photograph here dates to his second stint with Portland’s Rosebuds, which came in the old WHL in 1925-26. The following year he joined the fledgling Chicago Black Hawks. At 34, he served as the team’s first captain and finished the season second in the list of the NHL’s top scorers, a point behind Bill Cook of the New York Rangers. Dick Irvin suffered a fractured skull in his second NHL season, and that led to his retirement as a player in 1928-29 as well as the start of a coaching legend.

(Image: Oregonian/Barcroft Studios. Oregon Journal; Lot 1368; Box 371; 371N5905)