The NHL likes to call Willie O’Ree the Jackie Robinson of hockey. And no one can deny how significant it was when he became the first Black player on the ice in an NHL game in 1958.  But what the league doesn’t like to talk about is what happened next. 

The Coloured Hockey League wasn’t just a sideshow to the main event of white hockey. And the way that league was targeted by the white establishment is reflective of the racism that Black players faced over the next century.