The NHL's loss then; Canada's loss now

[commodorified]

Hockey pioneer Herb Carnegie dead at 92


Herb Carnegie, who many believed was the best black player never to play in the NHL, has died. He was 92.

Carnegie, a dazzling centre man, businessman, philanthropist, championship golfer, and Order of Canada recipient, died Friday in Toronto, his daughter Bernice Carnegie told the New York Times.

Born on Nov. 8, 1919, to Jamaican immigrants, Carnegie fell in love with the game of hockey at an early age, playing on the frozen ponds in north Toronto and listening to Foster Hewitt call hockey games.

Playing alongside brother Ossie, Carnegie played in the Ontario junior ranks before moving to the semi-professional Quebec Provincial League, where they teamed up with Manny McIntyre of Fredericton, to form the first all-black line in pro hockey.

...

“When I was 13 or 14, I never missed a game when Sherbrooke [Carnegie's team] was in town,” [Jean] Béliveau is quoted saying in the Times. “I tried to duplicate what Herbie was doing at faceoffs and making passes onto the blade, not behind the wingman.”

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In the late 1930s, Carnegie was a member of the Young Rangers Junior A club in Toronto. The team would often practise at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“I was good enough for the Leafs because, according to Conn Smythe, ‘I would take Carnegie tomorrow for the Maple Leafs if someone could turn him white,’” Carnegie recalled, choking back emotion.

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He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 and was named to the Order of Canada in 2003.

Comments

[nenya_kanadka]

I would take Carnegie tomorrow for the Maple Leafs if someone could turn him white

O.O

He sounds pretty cool. :D I don't follow hockey at all so never heard of him before this.

...does it mark me as irredeemably geeky to have thought "early-season Deep Space Nine Starfleet uniform" at the first picture, though?