Willie O'Ree
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Willie O'Ree (born October 15, 1935, in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada) was the first black athlete to play professional ice hockey in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Midway through his second minor league season with the Quebec Aces hockey team, long known for its NHL-quality black stars, Willie was called up to the Boston Bruins of the NHL to replace an injured player. O'Ree was 95% blind in his right eye due to being hit there by an errant puck two years earlier, and this would've precluded him from playing in the NHL. However, Willie managed to keep it secret, and made his NHL debut with Boston on January 18, 1958, against the Montreal Canadiens, becoming the first black player in the league's history. He played in only two games that year, and came back in 1961 to play 43 games. He scored four goals and 10 assists in his NHL career, all in 1961.
Willie O'Ree noted that "racist remarks were much worse in the U.S. cities than in Toronto and Montreal," the two Canadian cities hosting NHL teams at the time, and that "Fans would yell, 'Go back to the south' and 'How come you're not picking cotton.' Things like that. It didn't bother me. I just wanted to be a hockey player, and if they couldn't accept that fact, that was their problem, not mine."
In the minor leagues, O'Ree was an all-star. He won two scoring titles in the Western Hockey League between 1961 and 1974, scoring thirty or more goals four times, with a high of 38 in both 1964-65 and 1968-69. Most of his WHL playing time was with the San Diego Gulls, who today play in the ECHL (formerly known as the East Coast Hockey League) at the San Diego Sports Arena, where O'Ree's number has been retired and hangs proudly from the rafters. O'Ree continued to play in the minors until age 43.
Unfortunately, O'Ree's landmark achievement did not set a precedent. After O'Ree, there wasn't another black player in the NHL until Mike Marson was drafted by the Washington Capitals in 1974. Black players with any sort of longevity at the NHL level are still rare, even though black talent abounds as it always has. However, NHL players are now required to enroll in a diversity training seminar before each season, and racially-based verbal abuse is punished through suspensions and fines by today's NHL.
In 1984, Willie O'Ree was inducted into the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame. Today, he is the Director of Youth Development for the NHL/USA Hockey Diversity Task Force. This is a non-profit program for minority youth, which encourages them to learn and play the game of hockey. The NHL and USA Hockey furthers this goal with the Used Equipment Bank, where people can donate their used equipment for socioeconomically disadvantaged youth (who might otherwise find it difficult to afford the expensive sets of equipment). O'Ree lives in La Mesa, California, just east of San Diego.
See also
External links
- Internet Hockey Database - Willie O'Ree's career statistics (http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php3?pid=8354)
- Black Players in the NHL (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmhockey1.html)