Portland hockey lost a legend last week when Art Jones, who starred on the Portland Buckaroos, died Feb. 3 at age 86.
A center iceman, Jones -- known as the Red Baron because of his scoring touch -- joined the Portland Buckaroos in 1960 and led them to eight league championships and three Patrick Cup wins.
He was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.
“Art was a trailblazer for hockey in Portland, and he is one of the best to ever play the game. He helped lay down the foundation of what hockey should be like at the Memorial Coliseum,” Portland Winterhawks President Doug Piper said in a news release. “We would like to share our condolences with the Jones family and celebrate the incredible man we loved.”
The Bangor, Saskatchewan, native served as Portland’s captain for 11 seasons, winning two MVP awards. He has 1,580 points in 1,180 regular-season WHL games, second-most in league history.
Jones retired from hockey in 1976 but stayed in Portland, participating in a number of Buckaroos tributes over the years at Portland Winterhawks games.
“It gets better every year,” Jones told The Oregonian in 2010. “I don’t think there’s any other team from that league that has tributes for them like this. The Winterhawk organization has a lot of class for doing this.”
He said in 2010 that he and his old hockey buddies got together occasionally at a sports bar in Northeast Portland to “have a few beers and talk things over, just like we did when we played.”
As a member of the 1960-61 Buckaroos team, Jones was one of the first to play in the newly built Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and in the team’s first season of existence in the WHL, Portland went on to beat the Seattle Totems in the league championship.
“The first game, I know it was exciting, but there weren’t many people here,” Jones told The Oregonian in 1990 during a 30th anniversary celebration of the Memorial Coliseum. “After about the first 10 games, we started packing them in. Then we won the championship that year, and after that it was all go.”
Jones lived his final years at a retirement home in Happy Valley with his wife, Jill.