pksuburban:

Today y’all are going to learn two very important people in hockey history.

One of them is Willie Eldon O’Ree. He was born in New Brunswick in 1935 which makes him 81 years old. In 1958 he was called up to the Boston Bruins and became the first black player in the NHL.

Coming eleven years after the integration of Major League Baseball with Jackie Robinson, Willie O’Ree became the first black NHL player, but he was not the first to break the color barrier in the NHL. That honor belongs to Chinese Canadian, Larry Kwong – born Eng Kai Geong in Vernon, British Columbia in 1923 (making him 93). He was the first person of Asian descent and first person of color to play in the NHL just one year after Jackie Robinson integrated baseball (1948). He played for the New York Rangers.

Larry Kwong was called up to the Rangers in March of ‘48 where he only saw the ice in the 3rd period for a very short amount of time. Unfortunately this was his only NHL ice time as he was soon sent back down. Despite being the leading scorer for the Rangers’ farm team, he was never called back up. He then left to play hockey in Canada’s senior leagues. He later moved to Switzerland and coached hockey there where he became the first person of Chinese descent to coach a professional hockey team (and he also became a tennis coach).

Willie O’Ree, however, impacted the NHL strongly as a person of color as he had more opportunities and playing time. Despite only having 5% of vision in his right eye that he hid, O’Ree was called up to the Bruins to replace an injured player. His first game he played for the Bruins was against the longtime rivals, the Montreal Canadiens, in January of 1958. He only played two games that year and then came back for 43 games in 1961. In his time playing, he said that racist remarks from fans were much worse in the United States than they were in Toronto or Montreal. However, he spent most of his career in the minor leagues and one of the teams he spent time with, the San Diego Gulls (now AHL affiliate for the Anaheim Ducks), retired his number.

After Willie O’Ree played in the NHL, the next black player didn’t even come until 1974 when the Washington Capitals drafted Mike Marson. Now there are currently 23 active black NHL players. The NHL teams are now required to have diversity training before each season and racist remarks are not tolerated and can warrant fines and suspensions. He is a part of the NHL/USA Hockey Diversity Task Force that helps out youth hockey programs. Just this past season, Joel Ward (another black NHLer) of the San Jose Sharks said that O’Ree was one of his role models and that there should be a league-wide retirement of his number (22) just like there was a league-wide retirement of Jackie Robinson’s number. I agree.