Color of Hockey: O'Ree Weekend 'unbelievably meaningful' for HIFE kids

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles the 2026 Willie O’Ree Skills Weekend hosted by the NHL and Detroit Red Wings March 19-22.

Cate Wilkins had tears in her eyes watching her son, Mark, perform drills on the ice at the Willie O’Ree Skills Weekend in Detroit last weekend.

Wilkins said she tried to keep it together when the rest of the young O’Ree players broke into thunderous stick taps after Mark Wilkins, a 16-year-old Calgary resident with Down syndrome, finished an end-to-end drill at BELFOR Training Center, the practice facility of the Detroit Red Wings.

“They were all standing in a line at the end of the rink and when Mark finally made it to the end of the rink, nobody was impatient,” his mother said. “They were all celebrating that he did it and they were giving him stick applause. I could see a giant grin on his face, and people were high-fiving him and giving him fist bumps.

You could just see his shoulders drop, like, ‘OK, I’m part of this thing now.’”

Mark was one of seven adaptive hockey players who took part in the annual O’Ree Skills Weekend for the first time. They were among 46 boys and girls ages 10 to 16 from 21 Hockey Is For Everyone programs across North America who participated in the March 19-22 event hosted by the NHL and Red Wings.

Players from Dallas Stars Adaptive Sports, Central Park North Stars, Grand Rapids Patriots of the Western Michigan Special Hockey Association and HEROS Hockey’s SuperHEROS program from Canada practiced and played with kids from the Washington, D.C.’s Fort Dupont Cannons, Detroit’s Ice Dreams, Los Angeles’ ThruGUIDANCE 24 Degrees of Color, Philadelphia’s Ed Snider Youth Hockey & Education and other HIFE programs.   

“Everybody was just simply a hockey player, and that was unbelievably meaningful for all everybody involved,” said Jen O’Brien, executive director of American Special Hockey Association, a nonprofit organization serving people with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities through the lens of hockey.

“It was exactly what hockey is supposed to be -- ‘I'm on a team, I'm playing, it's inclusive,’” O’Brien said. “Everything was boundary-less. It was really cool.”

The goal of the O’Ree weekend is to celebrate diversity in hockey and bring together boys and girls from varying backgrounds to participate in on- and off-ice activities and learn lessons designed to build confidence and teach life skills.

O'Ree, the first Black player to skate in an NHL game with the Boston Bruins against the Montreal Canadiens at the Montreal Forum on Jan. 18, 1958, was named the League's diversity ambassador in 1998. He has helped establish 39 grassroots hockey programs and inspire more than 130,000 boys and girls to play the sport.

“It was really cool because I’m from Flint, Michigan, and I got to see how players from different states have better skills and moves and all that stuff and I can learn from them,” said Kwauvon Wilson Jr., a 12-year-old forward who plays in the Greater Flint Hockey Association. “I think being part of a weekend like this helps me visualize all the things that they (pro hockey players) do to get there, and I just try my best.”  

It was a weekend of nonstop events for the youngsters. They saw the Boston Bruins defeat the Red Wings 4-2 at Little Caesars Arena on March 21; took a guided tour of Detroit’s majestic Fox Theater; and watched a screening of the award-winning Black hockey history documentary "Soul on Ice: Past, Present & Future." 

They hung out with Detroit forwards Emmitt Finnie and Marco Kasper, Red Wings alums Drew Miller and Danny DeKeyser, former professional player Hannah Bates and Red Wings broadcaster Trevor Thompson.

They attended a panel discussion and Q&A session that included “NHL on TNT” analyst and retired NHL forward Anson Carter; Jason McCrimmon, a 2023 Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award recipient who founded Detroit Ice Dreams in 2014; and Rico Phillips, a 2019 O’Ree Community Hero Award recipient who founded the  Flint Inner-City Youth Hockey Program in 2010.

“When people say, ‘Hockey is for everyone,’ you think it's an overused phrase, right?” said Carter, a member of the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition. “But if you walked into that room, it really was a representation of what we think hockey could be. Whether you've got Down syndrome, whether you're Black, you're White, you're straight, you're gay, you’re a boy or a girl, it didn't really matter because everyone there spoke hockey, and it was really an amazing thing to see.”

But the high points of the weekend for the kids were on the ice at BELFOR Training Center, where they ran through skills, drills, and games under the watchful eyes of guest coaches like Carter.

NHL linesman Shandor Alphonso, who became the League’s second Black on-ice official on Oct. 17, 2014, served as a guest referee when the kids played against each other on March 21, before he worked the Bruins-Red Wings game.

He said the O’Ree skills games were just as competitive as the Original Six rivalry he officiated later that night.

“You tell a bunch of kids that the games are just for fun and they were, like, ‘Yeah, whatever, buddy,’” Alphonso said. “I dropped the puck and these kids were locked in and ready to go.”

Alphonso said he was thrilled his NHL officiating schedule worked out that he was able to attend the O’Ree weekend.

“I think that's kind of our job to inspire the youth and the ones coming behind us, and that's kind of what I hope to do with everything I do on the ice and within the NHL,” he said. “To just inspire the next generation of kids that look like me and want to see themselves or want to be able to see themselves in a position like mine or even bigger one day. They'll aspire to go for their dreams and go after what they want.”