(ThyBlackMan.com) The Stanley Cup Playoffs have started despite issues related to COVID-19. Unfortunately, a COVID-19 outbreak within the Vancouver Canucks team delayed the start of hockey’s most famous playoffs but the playoffs are underway. One of the playoff teams, the Tampa Bay Lightning, garnered some headlines prior to the playoffs in their regular-season finale against the Florida Panthers. The Lightning started Mathieu Joseph, Gemel Smith, and Daniel Walcott, on the same forward line for that game. Those three are believed to be the first all-Black forward line in National Hockey League history. Here are some takeaways from that sports moment (in no particular order):
–No one on the Tampa Bay Lightning shied away from the moment
Oftentimes when the topic of racial barriers in sport are broken, the person or the people involved with “breaking the barrier” tend to downplay the racial importance or history in order to give credit to the person’s merit or skills that allowed them to make history in the first place. Regarding making history and playing with his Lightning teammates, Mathieu Joseph said, “It was great, man. A step in the right direction. It was fun to have some progress and it was great to see and I was glad I was part of it. … Any players of color in this league want to showcase to our families or other people of color. I thank the coaching staff for doing this.” The magnitude of playing was not lost on Daniel Walcott, who said, “A whirlwind of emotion, a long time coming. To get into that starting lineup was great. … Coop did something really special here to promote this for young kids.”
–The Lightning were one of the right NHL teams to make this move
The NHL is a “white” sport in terms of its participants, fans, and organizations. For Black hockey players, it has to be difficult playing a sport that you enjoy but not seeing people that look like yourself involved in any capacity. Along with their three Black players, the Lightning also have two Black coaches, video coach Nigel Kirwan and goaltending coach Frantz Jean. It helps in the transition to the most competitive professional hockey league in the world for Black players that there are some staff members on the team that are Black.
-It’s a reminder of the hockey and the NHL’s white, exclusionary history
Hockey history was made when the three Black players started on the same forward line for the Lightning in 2021. The fact that history is still being “made” in 2021 is a reminder of how long systems of discrimination have existed and still do. The NHL’s first Black player was Willie O’Ree, who became the first player of color to play in the NHL as a member of the Boston Bruins in 1958, 40 years after the NHL was founded. O’ Ree didn’t get into the Hockey Hall of Fame until 2018, over 50 years since his last NHL game. Despite talented Black Canadians and Americans that could have physically played hockey and in the NHL, the culture of hockey and the NHL has not been welcoming to Black people and Black athletes.
-Too early to call this moment “pivotal” or a “footnote”
Currently, about 3% of NHL players are Black, which is by far the lowest percentage of Black athletes among the “Big Four” North American professional sports leagues of the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Major League Baseball. In order to grow the number of Black athletes in their sport, the NHL’s small collection of Black players have to become impact players that are promoted heavily. The league also has to do a better job of building a pipeline of Black hockey players or this Tampa Bay Lightning history will be a nice moment in time instead of a game changing step.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines