[On March 3rd,
1875, the first organized ice hockey game was played. So this week for
the sport’s 150th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of hockey
histories, leading up to a weekend post on some SportsStudiers we can all learn
from!]
On three
groundbreaking players who together reflect the sport’s gradual evolution.
1)
Herb
Carnegie (1919-2012): As with baseball in the US, for much of the early 20th
century hockey in Canada was racially segregated, with organizations like the Colored
Hockey League of the Maritimes offering the only consistent
opportunities for Black players. That means that, as with the Negro Leagues in
baseball, we have far too many instances of clearly exceptional, Hall of Fame
worthy players (as the first hyperlink above reflects) who never had the chance
to play in the full professional leagues. Herb Carnegie is very high on that
list, winning MVP multiple times in lower
professional leagues in Canada and even receiving a tryout with the
New York Rangers in 1948. But the Rangers
refused Carnegie an NHL roster spot and offered him less
money to play in their minor league system than he was making in the lower
leagues and he turned them down, one more reflection of what was lost in this
segregated era of hockey.
2)
Willie
O’Ree (1935- ): A decade after Carnegie’s tryout, the “Jackie Robinson
of ice hockey” finally broke the NHL’s color barrier. A prodigy from a very
young age, playing on teams at the age of 5 and playing in league playoffs
before he was 16, O’Ree actually met Robinson while still that talented
teenager in New Brunswick (not long after Robinson had broken into the major
leagues). Just a few years later, in January 1958, O’Ree was called up to the
Boston Bruins from the minor league Quebec Aces; he would play in only two
games in that year, but would stay in the league and play more than 40 games
during the 1960-61 season. He also faced racist taunts from Chicago Blackhawks
players and fans (among many many other during that year), leading to melee
after which, he later
reflected, he was “lucky to get out of the arena alive.” Like Jackie in
more ways than one, was Willie O’Ree.
3)
Grant
Fuhr (1962- ): O’Ree didn’t exactly open the floodgates, but gradually more
and more Black players did join the NHL over the next few decades. One of the
most groundbreaking and talented was Grant Fuhr, the first Black goalie to play
in the league and the first to win a Stanley Cup when his Edmonton Oilers did
so five times in the 1980s (and eventually the first to be inducted into the Hockey
Hall of Fame as well). Fuhr being the first in those categories a century
after the creation of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes is as
frustrating a fact as any produced by segregated histories—but we can remember the
frustrations while still celebrating the iconic and inspiring individuals who
helped change them, a list that includes all three of these hockey stars.
Last
hockey history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Hockey histories you’d highlight?
