When Boston Bruins president Cam Neely told Willie O’Ree last month that the team was going to make him only the twelfth player in its history to have his number retired, the former NHLer was caught off guard.
"I was at a loss for words there for a few seconds," O'Ree recalled, speaking to reporters. "And I said, ‘I’m overwhelmed and thrilled about having my Bruins jersey hung up in the rafters.’”
O’Ree’s number 22 will preside over TD Garden as a monument to his becoming the first Black player in NHL history on Jan. 18, 1958. It’s taken longer than it should have, but hockey is finally starting to truly recognize O’Ree and his accomplishments.
But for O’Ree and those that have come after him, there’s still a long way to go.
“Tonight, I am here to tell you we are not done. Because the work is not done," he said at his 2018 Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony. "We have barriers to break and knock down. Opportunities to give.”
The Bruins originally planned to retire O'Ree's number on Feb. 18. That has now been pushed back to Jan. 18, 2022 — the 64th anniversary of his groundbreaking game. The NHL hopes to give O'Ree a proper ceremony with fans in attendance.
His name and number will be immortalized alongside architects of the Bruins franchise like Bobby Orr and Cam Neely. In his homeland, O'Ree has been named to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor. In Boston, a street hockey rink in Allston bears his name.
But there’s more the O’Ree’s followers would like to see happen. One of the goals of Sydney Kinder, a leader of the Hockey Players of Color movement, is to see O’Ree’s number retired leaguewide.
“Cause I think once you see his number retired in every rafter, raised to every rafter, you’re sparking so many conversations in multiple different cities of, ‘Who’s 22? What did he do?'" she said. "And then that peeks so many interests, and that makes his name so much more commonplace.”
It would be a move similar to what baseball has done with Jackie Robinson’s number 42, which the MLB retired in 1997. Kinder’s received pushback because of O’Ree’s stats — he only played in 45 NHL games and scored four goals as a winger. That’s not the issue for her.
“His points don’t matter," she said. "The stat sheet is incomparable to the change that he’s done to not only grow the game on the ice, but grow the game off the ice … You can talk to any player of color currently, and that’s both women and men. They’re going to nod to Willie O’Ree.”
Leaguewide recognition and his number's retirement would match an honor that the NHL has given to only one other player — Wayne Gretzky, “The Great One” of hockey.
The jersey retirement, Hall of Fame nod and other honors are not all of O’Ree’s story in hockey.
O’Ree made it his mission in his post-playing days to grow the game beyond its longstanding borders, helping to head clinics and acting as the diversity ambassador for the NHL’s Hockey Is for Everyone campaign since 1998.
That work directly impacted Kinder, who grew up playing in New York through an organization called Ice Hockey in Harlem that, like O’Ree, works to expose underserved communities to the game. O'Ree's story was a big part of the program.
Kinder said she had fun playing in Harlem and was welcomed as a young Black woman. But as she got older and started playing at higher levels, where there wasn’t the same diversity she experienced growing up, that feeling changed.
“So when I got to my collegiate experience, I almost felt very burnt out by the sport because then you’re the token Black kid on the team," she said. "You have to either uphold some stereotypes while downplaying other stereotypes. But also, you’re codeswitching to make everyone feel comfortable around you.”
Despite these struggles, she hasn’t lost her passion for the game.
As the director of the Hockey Players of Color movement, she’s working to make the game more welcoming to everyone.
For hockey, that push may just be the biggest challenge the game faces.
The Challenge At Hockey's Roots
Listen to part 2 of this story:
Dallas Jackson didn’t even know how to skate when she started playing hockey.
Jackson, a senior captain for Concord-Carlisle High School’s girls hockey team, remembers watching Bruins games on TV and being fascinated by the speed of the game — and the fights.
Her parents got her involved with S.C.O.R.E. Boston Hockey, a nonprofit that works to provide access to hockey to young players in a city that has deep ties to O’Ree. It’s where she learned how to skate and play the game. But more importantly, it’s where she found a community.
“At S.C.O.R.E., I get to see people who actually look like me," Jackson said. "Most of the staff (are) people of color, and I got to connect with them based on that, whereas most hockey programs you see are run by mainly white people. That was also a really important thing for my family.”
As hockey honors O'Ree's accomplishments, making the game more equitable at the youth level could be more important than ever. Facing that challenge may just be his true legacy.
Wendell Taylor, the president of S.C.O.R.E. Boston, speaks bluntly about the issue at hand.
“There are no rinks in communities of color," he said. "I mean, I have to take the kids out to Milton to skate. Let’s be really clear, there aren’t rinks in communities of color, which means to develop that skillset, you have to travel. You have to travel to places that aren’t your community.”
In hockey, it’s almost a given that kids must dedicate hours just to learn how to properly skate, let alone play. Once you add in the costs for equipment and reserving time on the ice, it’s a combination of time and money that Taylor says precludes many young people from participating.
“In an era where specialization comes early, in an era where a parent has to pick or choose what opportunities their kid is gonna participate in, I often see parents of great means saying, ‘I don’t want my kid to be a hockey player. I don't want to wake up at 6 a.m. and take them to the rink and drive up to Pennsylvania and then Connecticut, to Florida to play in the stinkin' hockey tournament. Let them play basketball. Here's a basketball; go around the corner,'" he said. "If I have an opportunity to give my kid, I have limited time, I have limited opportunity, and I may not have the ability to drive them all over the world. Why would I choose hockey over something which is easier to get to, more familiar to me, more familiar to my community and where the rewards are more clear, in my mind?”
Taylor gives credit to the NHL and USA Hockey for the work they have done to help shrink the gap somewhat and points to the NHL's hiring of Kim Davis as a league executive as a bright spot. According to the NHL, the league and the NHL Players' Association have contributed more than $100 million since 2015 through various programs aimed at growing the game. The leauge also created the Youth Hockey Inclusion Committee to help make the game more accessible to younger players.
Right now, diversifying hockey is a crucial investment for the game’s future.
“Hockey is a sport which is growing, but not growing as fast as we’d like to," Taylor said. "And this country’s changing. If they don’t get a fan base that starts to look like the rest of this country, this doesn’t grow as a sport, right? So it’s about the players and the fan base ... Am I going to tell you that things are going as fast as people would like? No. But am I excited to see the initiatives that have been put in place, the steps the NHL has taken, the hiring of people like a Kim Davis to do this? The answer's yeah."
Even though he hung his skates up decades ago, O’Ree may be the person still making some of the biggest steps to grow the game.
Bryant McBride, a former NHL executive, produced a documentary on O’Ree. For McBride, O’Ree’s life after his playing days may be his biggest contribution to the game.
“He blazed a trail in a really significant way that was really hard. But then, at the age of 61, he started his second NHL career ... being the Pied Piper and evangelizing the game that provided life chances for kids," he said. "And in my book, that’s more important than scoring 1,000 points. He’s impacting lives.”
McBride said that O’Ree did six years worth of time on the road between the ages of 61 and 83 as he spread the gospel of the game to others who came after him — players like Dallas Jackson, who wrote a piece for NESN earlier this month that highlighted how the game has helped give her confidence.
“It’s just a thing that, in my family, we’re all aware of, because we know that without Willie O’Ree and all the people with him or people who came after him, the way our family gets to experience hockey might not have been possible," Jackson said in an interview GBH News.
Despite delays due to COVID-19, O’Ree’s number will eventually hang over TD Garden and maybe one day hang over the arenas of the NHL’s other 30 teams. But unlike a number suspended from a ceiling, O’Ree’s legacy is still in motion.
As people like Dallas Jackson continue to take to the ice, the fruits of the seed O’Ree planted over 60 years ago continue to flourish — and maybe even multiply.
