The Good Die Young: A Closer Look at the C55 Imperial Tobacco Hockey Set
 

https://lelands.com/images_items/item_18269_1.jpg
Image taken from lelands.com

After picking up a few c55 cards, I have decided to try and complete a set. Out of the three tobaccao sets (C56, C55 & C57), these
ones are the easiest to find, however, it can be a challenge to locate nice examples. Last night, I was just doing a little research
on some of these players who are featured in this set and I came across something very shocking: a lot of these guys passed away at
a very young age. Most hockey fans are familiar with Vezina's early passing, but it gets worse than that. Let's take a look below:

Marty Walsh - dead at 30.
Hamby Shore - dead at 32.
Jack Darragh - dead at 33.
James Power - dead at 36.
Hector Dallaire - dead at 36.
Joe Hall - dead at 37.
Georges Vézina - dead at 39.
Larry Gilmour - dead at 40.
Bruce Ridpath - dead at 41.
Ken Mallen - dead at 45.
Skene Ronan - dead at 48.
Didier Pitre - dead at 50.
Riley Hern - dead at 50.

There are also players who passed away in their 50s, but I didn't include them yet. What a long list! All of this is just difficult to fathom. :eek::eek::(

Crazy that many hockey players today live to their 90's. The reason why many died young at that time is because of how small their towns were where they played. Canada didn't have many people living there at the time so if you got sick, you pretty much didn't have the best medicine around. Tuberculosis was the thing that claimed many from the era.

let me highly recommend this podcast if you are interested in hockey history!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000474442387

Advances in medicine have kept millions alive who, had they been born decades earlier, would certainly
have died young of maladies easily treatable today.
Vezina, of course, succumbed to tuberculosis in 1926. Eleven years earlier, the same disease took Marty Walsh.
During the 1919 Stanley Cup Final, Joe Hall perished of the Spanish flu, resulting in the cancellation of the Final.
Hamby Shore was another victim of that influenza pandemic the previous year.
Jack Darragh suffered a ruptured appendix, ending his life in 1924. Hod Stuart was 28 when he died
in a 1907 swimming mishap. Another young star player, Alan "Scotty" Davidson, was only 23 when he was killed
in combat during WWI. The great goaler Charlie Gardiner was just 30 when he was done in by a brain hemorrhage.
The great goalscorer Didier Pitre, if memory serves, put on a huge amount of weight after his playing days,
and died at 49 in 1934 of what was probably a heart attack.

The early days of hockey was quite ugly/barbaric as well and some actually died on the ice or due to an activity/incident on the ice.

Violence has been a part of ice hockey since at least the early 1900s. According to the book Hockey: A People's History, in 1904 alone, four players were killed during hockey games from the frequent brawls and violent stickwork.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_in_ice_hockey