Betting on black
If the NHL wants to diversify, Atlanta is the place to start
MARK SPECTOR in AtlantaNational Post mspector@nationalpost.com
January 26, 2008
This has always been the great black city. The population is more than 60% African American, and even today, the seeds sewn by Atlanta native Martin Luther King are seen everywhere.
So it was the perfect place yesterday for a luncheon commemorating the
50th anniversary of Willie O’Ree’s arrival as the first black man to play in the National Hockey League.
Whoopi Goldberg sent a video tribute. Giant posters of Jarome Iginla, Mike Grier, Georges Laraque, Tony McKegney, Grant Fuhr, Ray Emery and Kevin Weekes served as a backdrop for National Hockey League’s very public wooing of its largest, untapped demographic in the United States. Here yesterday, they celebrated the Colored Hockey League of Nova Scotia, where families who escaped slavery in the south on the Underground Railroad played hockey, one of Canadian history’s more poorly recorded facts.
“It’s kind of ironic this year that we are in Atlanta, the whole slavery connection and everything,” mused McKegney,
a Sarnia native whose skills were so superior, people were forced to forget the colour of his skin. “It would have been interesting to know what it would have been like if you were average.”
The National Hockey League has had a diversity program for more than a decade, but the full-court press came out yesterday as its all-star festivities opened with a major pitch to black America.
Iginla will captain the Western Conference team tomorrow, while today former Atlanta Hawks basketball star Dominique Wilkins will sit on the judges panel for the breakaway competition.
Elsewhere, three Anaheim Ducks will appear on Snoop Dogg’s new television show, Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood, as the hip hop icon gets a hockey lesson that meshes perfectly with what’s going on in Atlanta.
It is, when you think it through, part and parcel of a league that has forged ahead in bringing its foreign game into the south.
If you’re trying to sell hockey in Atlanta, you had better be selling it to the African-American community as well. That means celebrating the 10 or so black players who are in the NHL at any given time, and thanking the good Lord that one of them is good enough to wear a ‘C’ when the All-Star Game comes to a city such as Atlanta.“It meant a lot for me to see those guys in the NHL,” Iginla said of his youth in Edmonton’s suburbs where he grew up watching Fuhr and McKegney play. “To see that it could happen. It helped me a lot to look and say, ‘Yeah, there are.’ It gave me a lot of strength.”
At first glance, the disconnect is cavernous, however, between the way players such as Iginla, Grier and Fuhr were raised, compared to the target demographic of southern blacks.
Today’s black NHLer is, by and large, a product of a suburban, upper-middle class, Canadian (or Boston) upbringing. They come from hockey hotbeds where indoor and outdoor rinks abound. Their parents could afford the fees, equipment and travel that have forced the cost of being a hockey parent up through the roof — especially in the U.S., where fewer teams and rinks equals more travel and expense.
That is the nut the NHL has to crack, as they travel O’Ree around this season as their Jackie Robinson. It is one thing to entice black kids to want to play in the NHL.
But unless they can afford what it costs to even start down that road, that untapped market might just stay untapped.“I think corporations have to get involved, and communities have to get involved in building arenas downtown,” McKegney said. “The equipment is obviously very expensive, versus playing basketball, football or baseball.”
Does anyone think that hockey can get in line before all the other sports and convince Sun Belt politicians to build hockey rinks? Then allow the kids to play in them for less than cost?
Outside Atlanta, that’s a chicken-and-egg question to which nobody knows the answer. Commissioner Gary Bettman’s pitch this weekend is not being made in Minnesota or the U.S. northeast. It’s being made right here in a southern city that has always set itself apart from the rest of the south when it comes to race relations.
In the days of segregation, Atlanta stood apart from the rest of the south. Today, it is home to a collection of the best black colleges this country has to offer, three of which had tables at yesterday’s luncheon. A
s such, Atlanta is also home to a very large number of wealthy, educated African Americans.
The kind of people who can afford to have their kids in hockey.“The first time I played in a hockey game with another black person, either on my team or against me, was after 23 years of playing hockey. It was Grant Fuhr in Edmonton,” said McKegney, who played 912 NHL games. “That many years of hockey? You talk about being alone.”
If Bettman has his way here in Atlanta, those days will soon be forgotten.
“As a player, it’s pretty cool to think that there are maybe some young black kids who are looking up to you. Maybe I’m one of those guys. It’s pretty special,” Iginla said. “There is a connection. When I said what I wanted to be when I was older, well, they’re probably saying the same thing — you know, ‘What are my chances?’
“Hopefully, they’re seeing that it is possible.”
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NHL honours O'Ree at All-Star WeekendGeorge Johnson , Canwest News Service
Published: Saturday, January 26, 2008
ATLANTA - On that night, half a century ago, Willie O'Ree scored no goals, added no assists and had no penalty minutes.
But his impact on the sport, not just on that game, was went beyond statistics, and into the realm of history.
Friday, during its All-Star Weekend, the NHL hosted a luncheon in Atlanta to celebrate the 50th anniversary of O'Ree breaking the colour barrier in the NHL on Jan. 18, 1958.
NHL honoree Willie O'Ree speaks at the NHL Diversity Luncheon to commemorate his 50th anniversary during the 2008 NHL All-Star weekend at the Westin Peachtree Ballroom on January 25, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia.View Larger Image View Larger Image
NHL honoree Willie O'Ree speaks at the NHL Diversity Luncheon to commemorate his 50th anniversary during the 2008 NHL All-Star weekend at the Westin Peachtree Ballroom on January 25, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia.
"The greatest night of my life,'' a crowd of more than 300 heard O'Ree say on a scratchy recording from CFCF radio in Montreal of his debut for the Boston Bruins.
Comedienne Whoopi Goldberg sent a video tribute ("I've got a new job honey,'' she said, explaining her absence from the festivities, "so you see they don't let me travel"). Martin Luther King III took part. Ambassador Andrew Young told the audience of he and some friends cutting down branches off palm trees during their youth in New Orleans, strapping on roller skates and playing hockey.
Original Six stars Bobby Hull, Johnny Bower and Ted Lindsay attended.
"He was the Jackie Robinson of hockey,'' said Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla, also on hand.
At the luncheon, historian George Fosty presented a 12-minute clip from his soon-to-be-finished 45-minute documentary film Black Ice: The Lost Story of the Coloured Hockey League. It centres around runaway American slaves using the Underground Railroad to escape to Halifax, where they formed the Colored Hockey League.
In his current role with the league's Diversity Program, the 72-year-old Willie O'Ree has helped 40,000 kids in the last seven years get involved in the sport he loves.
"My dad once said, 'Find a job you love and you won't work a day in your life,' " said O'Ree. "It's so true."
But however much he loves hockey, it's a sport that has not always loved him back.
"I had to fight,'' recalled O'Ree of the prejudice he encountered in many leagues during his playing career.
"Not because anybody butt-ended me or speared me. I just wanted to protect myself. I heard the N-word so many times I thought they were paying me a compliment.
"I thought 'If they can't accept me for my skills and abilities, then it's their tough luck.
"Sometimes it got a little rough."
Since becoming involved in the NHL's diversity initiative, the number of programs has risen from four to 39.
"There's no disgrace in failing,'' said Willie O'Ree. "The only disgrace is in not getting back up and trying."
Calgary Herald
gjohnson@theherald.canwest.com
