coach for the 1955–56 season, taking the reins of a moribund team that had only made the playoffs once in the past 10 years and finished last in the past two seasons. Irvin was unable to turn the team's fortunes around, and the Black Hawks again ended the year in last place, despite the emergence of Ed Litzenberger as a scoring star. Irvin was to coach the Black Hawks again in 1956–57, but he became so ill with bone cancer that he had to retire before the season began. He died a few months later at age 64 in Montreal. A year later, Irvin was elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame. His coaching career included four Stanley Cups with 692 regular season wins. Among the seven coaches with four Stanley Cup championships, only Al Arbour and Scotty Bowman have more wins than Irvin. Playing style When PCHA president Frank Patrick signed Irvin to his league for the 1916–17 season, to play with the Portland Rosebuds, he claimed the 23-year old former Winnipeg amateur centre ice man was "the greatest forward who ever came into the Pacific Coast League" and predicted that before the end of the season Irvin would be "one of the best players in the country." Patrick hailed Irvin as a "natural-born goal getter" who "scores from almost any possible angle." After a slow start in Portland, where Irvin himself was convinced that he was not to be given a chance to properly display his worth as a player, later on confessing that he had had early thoughts on leaving the league and returning home to Winnipeg, he was finally injected into a game in Portland and made good with a vengeance. At the end of the season he had lived up to Frank Patrick's high expectations and he almost caught up with the top point producers in the league, finally finishing 4th in goals and 5th in points despite his slow start to the season where he sat on the bench for most of the first five games. Irvin was not only clean playing but also a clean living individual who did not touch either alcohol or nicotine, figuring a perfect health would be one of his best assets, to go along with his deceptive wig-wagging moves and his dangerous shooting ability on the ice. Personal Irvin kept a home in Regina, Saskatchewan, for most of