Post by Admin on Jul 28, 2022 15:36:11 GMT -4
Hockey honors Willie O’Ree for becoming NHL’s first black player 60 years ago
Willie O’Ree remembers the pre-game talk as if it were yesterday.
Boston Bruins Head Coach Milt Schmidt and General Manager Lynn Patrick sat down their rookie forward, a call-up from the Quebec Aces, before his debut against the Montreal Canadiens in the old Forum and told him “Willie O’Ree, we brought you up because we think you can add a spark to the team.”
‘”Don’t worry about anything else,”‘ O’Ree recalled them telling him. ‘”Just go out and play the game, the organization is behind you 100 percent.”‘
O’Ree didn’t realize the gravity of that January 18, 1958 talk until after the Bruins blanked the Habs 3-0. O’Ree didn’t register a point on the stat sheet that night, but he made a mark in history as the National Hockey League’s first black player.
“I didn’t even know I broke the color barrier until I read it in the newspaper the next day,” O’Ree told me recently.
Hockey honored O’Ree on Wednesday for the 60th anniversary of his feat, a celebration that really began over the weekend in Boston.
But Wednesday was the big day. The Canadiens were in Boston to play the Bruins at TD Garden. Before the game, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh proclaimed January 18 as “Willie O’Ree Day.” The city also announced plans to refurbish a street hockey rink and name it in O’Ree’s honor.
“Willie’s speed, his skill and sheer perseverance earned him a job in a six-team National Hockey League where jobs were, indeed scarce – 60 years ago,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “We celebrate not only the NHL games he played but the countless thousands of boys and girls he has inspired since becoming our ‘Hockey is for Everyone’ ambassador in 1998.”
The league pulled out all the stops Wednesday. O’Ree dropped a ceremonial puck before the B’s-Habs game. Players wore Willie O’Ree 60th anniversary patches commemorative patches on their jerseys.
