March 6, 2025: Hockey Histories: Black Players

[On March 3^rd, 1875, the first organized ice hockey game was played. So this week for the sport’s 150^th 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 20^th 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?