NHL Anniversaries: The Good

He's been called the Jackie Robinson of hockey. Willie O'Ree takes pride in the title, but back in 1964 he pointed out that it's not a perfect comparison:

"They've called me the Jackie Robinson of hockey, and I'm aware of being the first, and of the responsibilities, but I'm also aware that there have not been, and are not many, colored players able to play hockey, that there has never been the discrimination in this game there was in baseball, and that I didn't face any of the very real problems Robinson had to face."

Fair enough. When O'Ree joined the Boston Bruins in 1958, hockey didn't have a Negro League filled with world class players, as there was in baseball when Robinson desegregated the Major Leagues about a dozen years before.

But O'Ree admits he faced his share of abuse, and we know of black hockey players before and after him who had their careers derailed by racism.

After O'Ree it was 16 years before another black player skated for an NHL team, and hockey today remains a predominantly white game. So the NHL's embrace of O'Ree is appropriate, as is this week's celebration of the 50th anniversary of his first game with the Boston Bruins.

Most who eventually followed O'Ree - from Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr to enforcer Peter Worrell to current MVP candidate Jarome Iginla - claim that race is not an issue in the hockey world. Most commentators concede that the small number of blacks in today's NHL is due to larger cultural and socio-economic factors. But as LZ Granderson of ESPN points out, that's shouldn't be taken as good news:

Hockey is a beautiful and exciting game. But it's also an expensive one. And not seeing more players of color in the NHL reminds me of the significant class gap along racial lines in this country. It's not that the NHL is systematically keeping brothers out of the sport... But the reality is, it takes expendable income and time to get a young kid to the point where he's good enough to even have professional hockey be a pipedream, let alone a legitimate option. And, generally, extra cash isn't something people in this country have a lot of, particularly minorities.

While those inequities exist and the history of black hockey remains largely unknown, Willie O'Ree stands as a contemporary figure, not just a footnote from the past.

(Photo: Brad Barket/Getty Images)