Hall of Famer Irvin had legendary impact on NHL

It is the explosive opening scene in the 2005 film "The Rocket," a critically acclaimed biopic on the life and times of the Montreal Canadiens' incandescent Maurice "Rocket" Richard.
In the bowels of the Montreal Forum, Canadiens coach Dick Irvin, played by actor Stephen McHattie, is being told that Montreal has just forfeited its game against the Detroit Red Wings on March 17, 1955. A fan's tear-gas bomb is choking the arena, and what would be a historic riot is now unfolding, one that would spill into the streets in protest of Richard's suspension for his having struck an official four days earlier during a game in Boston.

As the Forum empties in a panic through the acrid haze, McHattie's Irvin is outside the Canadiens dressing room, outraged that his team is forfeiting to Detroit.
Dick Irvin Jr., the coach's son, was in the Forum press box that 1955 night, a 23-year-old keeping statistics for his father. He made his way down to the dressing room through the mayhem and found a coach not bouncing off the walls as portrayed in the film, but one who was remarkably calm amid the sound of shattering windows and the arena being torn apart.
"My mother and I used to talk about how calm Dad was the night of the riot," Irvin said during a 2005 talk, shortly after having viewed the film for the first time.
"I was chicken. I wanted to get in the car and go straight home, but Dad wanted to drive around town and see what was going on."

It was then that Irvin Jr., anxious about how his father would be played in the film, realized that he was watching a story scripted with creative license for dramatic effect and not a documentary.
His father's storied career hardly needed embellishment.
James Dickinson Irvin Sr., born 125 years ago Wednesday in Hamilton, Ontario, first found hockey fame not as a coach, but a player.
The center began his career with Portland of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in 1916-17, scoring 45 points (35 goals, 10 assists) in 23 games.
Irvin, listed as a salesman and butcher in his recruitment papers, served with the Canadian army during World War I, returning to play senior hockey. Then, from 1921-25, he played professionally with Regina of the Western Canada Hockey League. In his first season there, Irvin came closest to the Stanley Cup as a player, his team losing a two-game, total-goals series 5-2 to Vancouver of the PCHA, the winner playing the NHL's Toronto St. Pats in the Stanley Cup Final.
He signed again with Portland for 1925-26, the Rosebuds now in the WHL. When that league folded at season's end, Irvin was among the Portland players whose contract was picked up by the NHL's expansion Chicago Black Hawks (then two words). He played three seasons for them (1926-29), at age 34 becoming the Black Hawks' first captain, known for his puck-handling, shooting accuracy and early use of the slap shot.

He fractured his skull in December 1927, which led to his retirement the following season, and he got his first taste of coaching with the Black Hawks in the final 12 games of 1928-29.
And then in 1930-31, Irvin went on an unprecedented run of 26 consecutive seasons of coaching in the NHL: one with Chicago, nine with the Toronto Maple Leafs, 15 with the Canadiens and, finally, one more with Chicago in 1955-56. He won a Stanley Cup championship in Toronto (1932) and three in Montreal (1944, 1946, 1953).
Irvin died on May 16, 1957, at age 64, having coached 1,639 NHL regular-season and playoff games. He is seventh in NHL history with 692 regular-season wins.
"Everyone in the hockey world mourns," NHL president Clarence Campbell said of Irvin. "From the very beginning of his career as an amateur in pre-First World War days to the time of his death, his whole life and everything he did was dedicated to the welfare of hockey, which he served with great credit and distinction to himself and to the game."
Then-Canadiens coach Toe Blake, who played for Irvin for the final eight seasons of his career, said: "I never met a better coach in hockey. Any success I've had in the game belongs to him."
Irvin dramatically overhauled the Canadiens when he arrived as coach in 1940-41, and Blake was among the handful of players he retained.

"He stripped the club," said Blake, who succeeded Irvin as coach and from 1955-68 led the Canadiens to eight Stanley Cup titles in 13 seasons. "Then we went on to win under him. He was a tough taskmaster. Before him, our club had been a bit too free and easy at times. But not under Dick."
Irvin had a huge role in developing many superstars, among them Richard, Elmer Lach, Ken Reardon and goalie Bill Durnan; the "Punch Line" he assembled, with Lach at center between Richard and Blake, was the most fearsome offensive trio of the 1940s.
"He was noted for his dry wit and as a coach who got the best out of every player," a Montreal Gazette report said of Irvin upon his death. "Even in his 60s, he was out on the ice on skates, demonstrating some particular point to his players. … He was a hard loser and expected his players to be the same. The one thing he wouldn't permit was to have his team shrug off a loss."
Irvin Jr., the coach's son and former statistician, went on to a distinguished career as a broadcaster in Montreal; his work calling and analyzing Canadiens games on radio and TV earned him the Hockey Hall of Fame's Foster Hewitt Memorial Award in 1988.
Thirty years earlier, Irvin's father had been enshrined as a player for the impact he had made with the Black Hawks but more for his hockey achievements before he arrived in the NHL. He led leagues in Manitoba and Saskatchewan in scoring and was a member of the Allan Cup-winning 1915 Winnipeg Monarchs, the Canadian senior-league champions.
On Wednesday, the 125th anniversary of the birth of Irvin Sr., a son will consider his legendary father in a variety of ways, as he always does.
"Even Scotty Bowman (who coached 30 NHL seasons) didn't coach 26 straight years," Irvin Jr. said Tuesday. "My dad's run was uninterrupted. In those days, they weren't often firing coaches, but it happened. So it's Dad's longevity that I think of the most. He was a star player who became a star coach."