Color of Hockey: O'Ree Award winner boosts new European College League

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 Jason McCrimmon, the 2022-23 Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award winner in the United States. McCrimmon makes his debut in October as coach and director of hockey operations with the Prague Guardians of the new European Union College Hockey League.

Jason McCrimmon has always been about giving chances through hockey.

As founder of Detroit Ice Dreams in 2014, he established a pathway for boys and girls from the city’s most underrepresented communities to ice skating and hockey by making them accessible and more affordable.

Now McCrimmon, who won the 2022-23 NHL Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award in the United States, is heading to Europe looking to provide opportunities for players to play there while pursing undergraduate and graduate degrees.

The 43-year-old Detroit native is coach and director of hockey operations for the Prague Guardians, one of six teams in the European Union College Hockey League, which makes its debut Oct. 2.

The Guardians, Prague Spartans, Bratislava Capitals, Brno Lions and Ostrava Steel Hawks in Czechia and the Lodz Legion in Poland each is affiliated with accredited universities in their cities where players can earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees. 

McCrimmon said the league was born of the rule change approved by the NCAA on Nov. 7, 2024 that enabled Canadian Hockey League players like Gavin McKenna, who was selected by the Toronto Maple Leafs with the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, to join NCAA teams. McKenna played one season with Penn State.

Fourteen of the 32 players selected in the first round of the 2026 draft are heading to NCAA Division I schools, including forward Caleb Malhotra (No. 3 by the Vancouver Canucks, Boston University), defenseman Daxon Rudolph (No. 4 by the Buffalo Sabres, University of Denver) and defenseman Carson Carels (No. 6 by he Calgary Flames, University of North Dakota).

“For a kid that might have had the opportunity and thought he was going to go (NCAA), it kind of slims the chances down,” McCrimmon said. “We’re kind of just creating a different avenue in the college space for a kid to have a different pathway to play hockey overseas while getting a degree. For me, it's just another opportunity to grow the game at another level.”

McCrimmon spent much of the summer preparing for his new role, recruiting players, holding tryouts and checking out the landscape in Prague. 

He had a ready-made pipeline of players as hockey fixture in the Detroit hockey community. McCrimmon was coach and owner of Motor City of the United States Premier Hockey League, where players showcase their talents for college or major junior teams. He was general manager of Motor City's Under-18 AAA team in the Tier 1 Hockey Federation last season. 

He is also an ambassador for the Detroit Red Wings' Learn, Play, Score, a program launched in 2020 that focuses on lowering systemic barriers by providing equitable access to hockey in various forms to children across the city. It includes street hockey within the physical education curriculum for all schools from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Griffin Hernalsteen, a 25-year-old defenseman who played with Motor City in 2017-18 and 2019-20, signed to follow his former coach to Prague, hoping it will lead to professional playing opportunities in Europe.

“I was just kind of reaching out to Coach McCrimmon about just seeing if he'd be able to help me make any sort of connection over there or to help me out with finding teams or anything,” said Hernalsteen, who played with Rochester Christian University of the American Collegiate Hockey Association for the past two season and seven games with NCAA Division III Finlandia University in 2021-22. “He asked, ‘Would you like to play for my team?' And I was like, 'Yeah, of course.’ My family had just taken a trip over to Italy, and I got to see a little bit of European culture. It was super beautiful and it just absolutely intrigued me and made me want to play professional over there.”

McCrimmon may be running a team in Prague, but he isn’t abandoning his Detroit roots or Ice Dreams.

“I’ll be over there for the season, from September to November to Thanksgiving break, come back home, then we’ll play up to Dec. 20, and the boys have a month off and I’ll come back home,” he said. “Then we’ll play all the way to the end of March, start playoffs and then I’ll be back in Michigan by mid-April and start recruiting again next year for Prague.”

McCrimmon said Ice Dreams, a NHL Hockey Is For Everyone affiliate, is in good hands under vice president Cynthia Wardlaw.

The nonprofit program also named Jalen Smereck, a 29-year-old Detroit native who recently retired from professional hockey, as its new director of player development.

Smereck, a former defenseman, had 272 points (51 goals, 221 assists) in 319 ECHL games with Fort Wayne, Norfolk, Rapid City, Cincinnati and Toledo from 2017-26, and 16 points (four goals, 12 assists) in 77 games with Tucson and San Jose of the American Hockey League from 2016-23. He also was a member of the 3Ice Philadelphia team that won the 3-on-3 league’s Patrick Cup championship this season.

“Cynthia is going to be the main anchor,” McCrimmon said. “Adding Jalen, it’s good to have another kid that knows the game, that has the passion for the game, that understands the value of having a program in the inner city.”