African-Americans have lost a lot of their history due to slavery and racism before during and after the civil rights movement. Yet history was made when a Canadian-born black man named Willie O’Ree who played 41 games (3 1/2 years/seasons) with the Boston Bruins and this was 1958 at a time blacks didn’t have much ground in the world since this was a milestone since hockey was a white male dominated sport and for O’Ree since at the time he started his career he was 23 years old. The sport hockey was about 10 years late when it came to integration of minorities in the NHL because all the other sports had already made the transition by the 1950.

Hockey was the only sport holding out since it was what you called the whitest sport ever since they had no black players, team owners, or sportswriters. O’Ree was crossing lines many blacks of his time had a heck of a time playing and being taken seriously in sports. Blacks have not made their place in the hockey world again for nearly 30 years.

It wasn’t until 1998 that Willie O’Ree was formally acknowledged for his groundbreaking historical position as the first black in the NHL and was appointed director for youth development for the NHL/USA Hockey diversity task force where he goes all over the country establishing programs with different teams. This was a milestone that was long overdue to happen because the face of sports would show some sign that the walls of racism and segregation have started to crumble down. When someone who lived in a time where the color of your skin limited you to advance in something, but it was one man who stepped out of the confinements of racism and segregation to be one of the best players in the NHL. Today’s NHL has recruited people of other ethnic backgrounds to the pro teams that currently make up the team list.

It’s showing that it’s not just whites who made the NHL it’s the fact that more opportunities in the league now more than ever with how they’re recruiting players, team managers, and other areas of the league. When you remove racism and segregation the world of opportunity looks brighter for those who are of a different ethnic background to feel like they can succeed in another area of the sports world.

Hockey will definitely improve with time to allow other ethnic groups to be recruited to play hockey. Until then it will be a majority black and white issue in the league and that’s up to the world to demand to see the full equality that should be in the league and around not just players, team owners/management, but also stretching itself to the audience the sport is trying to draw in to diversify the sport to be a sport anyone can play and enjoy watching. Willie O’Ree spends much of his time in San Diego since he left the league when his knee was so bad that later on he had to undergo a full knee replacement, but his time is spent traveling the country lecturing and working his position as director of youth development for the NHL’s diversity task force. With O’Ree’s current position this should set the league in the right direction in terms of diversifying the sport of hockey.

Diversity has opened the door for people of all ethnicities to enjoy and it’s a shared interest across the board for all ages. Some make it a family event to incorporate a single sport and in a region where hockey is popular it’s the choice sport for some people.

Many people will be surprised to learn that professional hockey goalies played without any face protection until nearly 1960.  Pucks can be hit at speeds up to 160 mph, and goalies used to get bruises and gashes on their face regularly during a hockey game.

The first goalie to wear a mask was Jacques Plante, a highly respected player with the Montreal Canadiens, and one of the legends of hockey.  He was an odd fellow, prone to asthma attacks, and to getting more injuries than many other hockey players.  He preferred reading books and painting over going to parties with his teammates.  During his career, he had gotten more than two hundred facial stitches.  In that era, a few hundred stitches were not highly unusual for a hockey player, but generally they were not just on the face.  He also had had two broken cheekbones, four broken noses, and a fractured skull.  Before Plante, several goalies had tried to use masks, but they were wire (similar to ones used by baseball catchers) and impaired vision to some extent.

As the 1958 hockey season was coming to an end, Plante was injured when a puck hit his forehead.  A member of the audience that worked in fiberglass wrote Plante a letter, and explained how he could make a mask molded to fit Plante’s face, and strong enough to protect it.  Plante agreed to sit as a model for the mask, and to wear it during the next hockey season.  He brought it out during the preseason games, and was laughed at and criticized by the hockey community.  His coach in Montreal was sure that the mask reduced his vision and asked him not to wear it.   About two months later, Plante was in a game when someone hit a backhanded from the side of the net.  There were too many players around the goal for Plante to see the puck, and the puck sliced into the side of his nose, which bled profusely.  It took seven stitches to close the wound.

Plante would not go into the next game unless he was allowed to wear his mask.  Since the Canadiens were traveling, the rules at the time required the host team to provide a backup if the goalie became unable to play.  Teams in the 1950s did not travel with backup goalies, and the goalie that the home team found was overweight, nearly forty years old, and had not played recently.  The coach of the Canadiens decided to let Plante play, for he would be a much better choice for goalie even wearing his mask.  The Canadiens won that game, three to one.

Further, Plante contributed to the Canadiens winning the next eleven games in a row, all while wearing his mask.  To make sure that the mask did not impair vision, his coach still required that Plante have an eye exam while wearing his specially designed mask.  Two other goalies joined Plante that year, and slowly the practice spread.  The last bare faced goalies were seen on the professional hockey circuit appeared in the early 1970s.

Wayne Gretzky was acknowledged as one of the all time great hockey players by nearly everyone when he broke several of Gordie Howe’s records.  He became the all time leading scorer with his 802nd goal, and also the all time point-getter when he got his 1852nd point.

Wayne was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, and his father built a backyard ice rink when Wayne was six years old.  He practiced daily for hours, with his dad teaching him the skills of skating, shooting, and stickhandling.  Even at the age of six, Wayne was playing on a team of ten year olds, far beyond the normal skill range of a six year old.  One year he got 378 goals on a peewee team, and earned the nickname “The White Tornado” because of his talents and his white gloves.

Wayne moved to Toronto at the age of fourteen to have more opportunities in hockey, and at 16 played in the World Junior Championship.  He was thought too small and slight to even make the Canadian team, but once there, he was named top center and was the leader in scoring for the entire competition.  Wayne knew that he wanted to play professional hockey, but at 17 was too young for the minimum NHL draft age of 20, so he signed a contract with the Indianapolis Racers.  That hockey team had financial troubles, and so Gretzky was moved to the Edmonton Oilers, where he became universally noticed.   In his first year at Edmonton he attracted a lot of notice, but only won one hockey trophy that year, the Hart Trophy.

The next year, 1980, began Wayne’s march to claim many of the hockey statistics as his own.  He won his first scoring title, and made a new assists record of 109, to surpass Bobby Orr.  The following year, he went past Phil Esposito’s record of 76 goals in one season, which many people had thought would stand forever.  Gretzky scored 92 goals in one season, which many people now view as simply impossible to break.  He also registered 212 points in a season, and he is the only player to ever have done that.  He is the only hockey player to break 200 points in a season, and he repeated that feat for four seasons.

Gretzky had a few signature moves.  He was known for not using a man skating ahead of him, but instead using the trailing man on rushes.  When the team had a penalty, Gretzky did not ice the puck in a defensive role, but rather tried to surprise the other team by scoring shorthanded.   He would also skate past the blue line and then curl, where he would wait for a defensemen to join him and create a real scoring chance.  “Gretzky’s office” was the area behind the other team’s goal, because he made so many perfect passes for scoring opportunities from there.

After playing with several teams, Wayne Gretzky ended his professional hockey career with the New York Rangers in the 1998-1999 season.  The National Hockey League retired his number 99, a fitting tribute to a remarkable player.

herbert Brooks coached the miracle hockey team of the Olympics of 1980.  He had skated in two Olympic teams himself, was a long time college hockey coach, and spent 1979 looking for recruits for the team.  In 1980, the US did not recruit NHL stars, for the players were still of entirely amateur status.  Herbie Brooks went to the National Sports Festival in Colorado Springs, Co in 1979 and found those players who were the most willing to adapt to his style of hockey playing.  His style was to skate hard and fast and work together as a team, with no individual standouts.  He gave them psychological tests as well as physical ones, and tried to determine which players could not play together due to intense regional rivalry.  Hockey was strong in only a few places back in 1980, and the rivalry between the University of Minnesota and Boston University was intense, culminating in a 1976 NCAA semifinal that was one of the nastiest college games played until that point.

Twelve of the young men he was considering for the team were from Minnesota, and Brooks had coached nine of them at the University of Minnesota.  Four were from Boston University, and Brooks was not sure if they could forget their regional allegiance to play together for the Olympic team as a true team.   The Easterners thought that Brooks was especially hard on them, but the men who had skated under Brooks said that his motto was “I’m here to be your coach; I’m not here to be your friend.”  Brooks was given a whip by the team as a gag gift for Christmas.

To get the team to work together, Brooks had six weeks of training camp, and then sixty-one hockey games played all over Europe and America during a five month period.  Brooks ran them ragged, criticized them, and left the morale building to his assistant coaches.   During this five month period he went over and over the team plans, looking for how to play the perfect game of hockey.  When the team was winning, he congratulated them, but kept working over the plans.  When the team tied, as they did in Norway, he was disgusted with the lack of effort.   After the game was over, he told his players “If you don’t want to skate during the game, then you’ll skate after it.”  And the team did just that, skating line sprints: end line to blue line and back, end line to red line and back, end line to end line and back.  The crowd left, the janitors turned out the lights, and still the team skated.   The next night, the team won, 9 to 0.

Herbert Brooks died in an automobile accident on August 11, 2003.  His Lake Placid team came to pay their respects to a hard taskmaster, but a beloved and respected coach.   As they said in the eulogy “Herbie had a dream. And his players had a dream.”  He pursued that dream to the remarkable gold medal team of Lake Placid in 1980.