On
April 8, Binghamton Senators goon extraordinaire Brian McGrattan bragged before
the B-Sens’ impending game with the Rochester Americans that he would break the
American Hockey League’s single-season record for penalty minutes by
immediately picking a fight with Amerks tough guy Sean McMorrow.
McGrattan
wasn’t bullshitting. About two minutes into the first period, McGrattan roped
in McMorrow, who had done nothing to spur on McGrattan but nonetheless found
himself sparring with a man who was determined to etch his name in the record
books.
Because
the game was being played in Binghamton, McMorrow became the target of
thunderous and merciless taunting from the B-Sens fans in Broome County
Veterans Memorial Arena. There was no doubt: the partisan crowd hated McMorrow.
But
was he hated solely because, as an enforcer, McMorrow often draws fans’ ire
when he throws his body around and cleans opposing players’ clocks?
Or
did the Binghamton crowd also hate McMorrow because he’s black?
Thanks
to geographic proximity and both teams’ sterling records, a tense rivalry has developed.
And shortly before the April 8 game, McMorrow used Binghamton as an example
when he discussed issues of race and hockey with City Newspaper.
“During
my first year [in the AHL, 2002-03], we might have gone to Binghamton, and
their fans might think of me as ‘that black guy,'” he said. “But by my third
year [this season], I was exactly the same as everybody else to them. To them
I’m not ‘that black guy.’ I’m McMorrow.”
In
fact, McMorrow said he has experienced very little racism during his three years
with the Amerks; he can point to only two specific incidents in which his race
became an issue. By now, he said, hockey has outgrown its reputation as a white
sport reluctant to become a multicultural pastime for fans and players.
It
was in youth and high-school hockey that he heard the taunts and slurs and
withstood the extra-hard checks and stick jabs. But by now, he said, hockey —
and the people who play and watch it — have grown up.
“It’s
a maturity level, a respect level,” he said.
It’s a rap
hockey has found very, very hard to shake: too white, too elitist, too expensive, too
unfriendly for any minority kid who might think about lacing up a pair of
skates. Indeed, the National Hockey League was an all-white enterprise until
Willie O’Ree, a speedy scrapper from New Brunswick, broke in with the Boston
Bruins in 1958.
In
hindsight, such racial monochromism isn’t too surprising given that for decades
the NHL’s ranks were almost exclusively filled by players from Canada, where
the percentage of black citizens was miniscule.
Before
O’Ree became the Jackie Robinson of hockey, black players dotted minor-league,
semi-pro, and club teams across Canada, with small-market stars like Fred “Bud”
Kelly and Herb Carnegie coming tantalizingly close to the big leagues. And in
1900, the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes emerged as the Canadian hockey
equivalent of the United States’ famous Negro Baseball Leagues.
But
it wasn’t until Mike Marson in the 1970s and adept goal-scorer Tony McKegney in
the 1980s that an African American earned a steady, long-term NHL gig. Then
came Hall of Famer Grant Fuhr, the goalie on the title-winning Edmonton Oilers
squads that also included legends Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, and Mark Messier.
It was perhaps Fuhr’s fame and success that firmly established that, given the
right circumstances and encouragement, hockey didn’t have to be incongruous
with the black experience.
(For
a detailed historical overview of blacks in hockey, read Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey, by
long-time hockey writer Cecil Harris.)
Over
the last few years the NHL has had roughly a couple dozen black skaters out of
more than 600 overall. While that percentage might not match the dominance
blacks have found in basketball and football, it’s light years ahead of the
environment in which O’Ree found himself 50 years ago.
Perhaps
the biggest evidence that black players might be close to breaking through in
the NHL is the Calgary Flames’ Jarome Iginla, a right winger from Edmonton who,
at the end of the 2003-04 season, was arguably the league’s most popular
player.
After
he led the Flames on a Cinderella run to the 2004 Stanley Cup finals (which
Calgary lost in heartbreaking fashion to Tampa Bay, four games to three), NHL
officials could barely contain their excitement: here was a smart, charismatic,
hugely talented black kid of Nigerian descent who had enraptured the hockey
world. Here was the face of hockey’s future, the poster boy for a league and a
sport that desperately wanted to appeal to a younger, hipper audience.
As it turns
out, hockey now needs all the help it can get. Even with players like Iginla leading the
way, the sport might never overcome the debilitating labor lockout that has
erased the 2004-05 NHL season. If few people cared about hockey before the
lockout, even less give a crap now that the NHL’s players and owners have shot
themselves in their collective foot with what has become a PR nightmare.
Which
means hockey bigwigs can no longer simply experiment with drawing black,
Latino, and other traditionally disadvantaged youth to the game. Hockey needs to tap the massive potential
within the millions of American and Canadian kids who traditionally wouldn’t
give hockey a second thought. It’s those kids who just might save the sport.
As
a result, hockey programs aimed at disadvantaged youth are springing up across
the country, including Rochester, where both the city and the Skating Institute
of Rochester give kids a chance to pick up a stick.
The
city’s Bureau of Parks and Recreation offers a program that gathers about two
dozen city kids ages 6-10 at Genesee Valley Park every Saturday from October
until April. The group boasts wide diversity, thanks to the city’s large
minority population.
And
that’s the goal, says John Kerr, the bureau’s director of athletics and
aquatics: “We want to bring inner-city kids who aren’t normally exposed to
hockey.” While basketball rims fill many city neighborhoods, he says, “there’s
not an ice rink on every corner.
The
program, Kerr says, is coed, and more importantly, it’s completely free for
participants. The weekly sessions are fairly intensive, with kids learning the
basics of the game and playing intrasquad scrimmages under the watch of
volunteer adults who have hockey experience, first-aid training, and security
clearance. The program has been so successful, Kerr says, that salaried coaches
and games against outside programs are slated for next year.
The
Skating Institute’s program, held at Shumway Arena, is similar, with
participants ranging in age from 2 to 14, says the program’s founder, Laurie
Kennedy. Kids with no experience on the ice are given skating lessons before
they tackle the rudiments of the game.
Like
the city’s program, the Skating Institute’s group of roughly 40 kids is diverse
on purpose. “We have kids of every race, age, and size covered,” Kennedy says.
While many of the youth don’t take up hockey permanently, she says, “at least
we give them a chance to try it.”
The
volunteer-driven program also takes a holistic approach to the sport, stressing
physical fitness and academic development, with students keeping written
journals and writing regular reports along the way. The program is also
supported by NHL Diversity, the pro league’s multicultural outreach effort.
While
the sport of hockey benefits from such programs, both Kennedy and Kerr hope the
kids involved also come away with key life lessons: teamwork, interpersonal
communication, physical fitness, sportsmanship, self-improvement, discipline.
Says Kerr: “We want to introduce them to a sport, and maybe a lifetime
activity.”
In that
respect, hockey is probably no different than any other American sport;
even with all the excesses and abuses in professional and big-time college
sports, there are countless men and women who were positively shaped by their
experiences in Little League, Pop Warner — or youth hockey.
But
can that universality be sold to minority and underprivileged kids who are
raised to view hockey as either too white, too costly, or both? Can enough
financial resources and personal dedication be mustered to tell such kids that
hockey just might present a world of possibilities?
The
Amerks’ McMorrow thinks it can, as long as kids are encouraged from an early
age, like he was, to embrace the sport and invest the intense amount of
physical and emotional dedication needed to succeed. He received such support
as a kid in Toronto, he says, especially from his mother. From early on,
McMorrow knew he wanted to play in the NHL, and once he set that goal, he has
never deviated from it.
“It’s
pretty much a role-model type thing,” he said. “It a kid watches Jarome Iginla,
they might say, ‘I want to be like Jarome Iginla.’ If it’s a black kid, he
might say, ‘I want to play hockey.’ When you see success, you want to mimic
it.”
Such
assertions receive support from trailblazer O’Ree himself, who now serves as
director of youth development for the NHL Diversity program. In a 2001
interview for nhl.com, O’Ree noted that some of the black players he inspired
have now become inspirations themselves.
“They
know they are role models for younger boys and girls playing now,” he said.
“These kids are now setting goals for themselves because it is possible to
break that barrier. You can do what you want if you believe you can, and if you
think you can, you will.”
If
that happens to enough kids, McMorrow said, all of hockey might reach the point
he said he’s found, one where his race just doesn’t matter, even to the
loudest, drunkest, obscenity-screaming opposing fan.
“A
lot of people don’t like change,” he said. “But once they get used to it, they
realize that it’s just another day at the office for me. At this level, it
really doesn’t matter what you look like. You’re here to make money, because
it’s your profession.”
The
Rochester Americans enter round one of the AHL playoffs today, April 20, in a
seven-game series against Hamilton at the Blue Cross Arena, One War Memorial
Square, at 7:05 p.m. The rest of the Rochester games in the series take place
Friday, April 22, at 7:35 p.m.; Friday, April 29, at 7:35 p.m. (if necessary);
and Monday, May 2, at 7:05 p.m. (if necessary). www.amerks.com
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2005.
