O'Ree still has impact on Weekes, community

MILTON, Mass. -When former NHL goaltender Kevin Weekes was growing up in Toronto, he saw diversity on his hockey teams, with teammates who were black and white, Chinese and Mexican, Russian and Filipino, Italian and Greek, Czech and Portuguese.
As a child, he had read about Willie O'Ree, who broke the color barrier in the NHL on Jan. 18, 1958, but at 16 began hearing more about O'Ree, what he had done, what he had meant. And it meant something to him.

"We had a lot of different players - we obviously had a lot of black players - but we had a lot of different players on our teams," Weekes said Saturday, at a youth tournament between Boston-based Hockey is for Everyone program SCORE Boston, and Philadelphia-based Hockey is for Everyone program Snider Hockey, at Ulin Memorial Rink. "We literally had people from all over the world on my youth teams growing up. So that was really helpful.
"But for a lot of the black players, like Anson Carter and myself and others, it started to resonate with us a lot more."
Weekes, an NHL Network analyst, was in Boston both to speak to the youth players from SCORE Boston and Snider Hockey, as well as to interview O'Ree for a piece that will run on NHL Network on Monday, followed by a two-part story on Wednesday and Thursday.

By the time Weekes made his NHL debut with the Florida Panthers in 1997, O'Ree's story had an even greater influence on him, especially "having the opportunity to do different events with him and see how passionate he was - you can still see how passionate he is - how energetic he is, how much he wants to inspire a lot of the boys and girls."
He saw how O'Ree's story became tangible to those boys and girls, as they were able to talk to him, to ask him questions. For them, O'Ree, who played 45 games over two seasons with the Boston Bruins, is not a story. He's a person. For Weekes, that makes it more profound.
"He's got so much energy," Weekes said. "He's got a young spirit. He was even saying today, 'I can't believe it's 60 years. I can't believe it's 60 years.' But he's up and he's about. And as he said when he was talking there in that address, in about three or four months he'll get back on the ice. He loves being in the rinks. He loves interacting with parents and kids and trying to inspire them to play the game."
Because, to Weekes, it isn't just about black players. It's about what O'Ree means to everyone, to being inclusive of everyone, boys and girls, black and white, in unconventional hockey markets like California and traditional markets like Boston.
"I've been really blown away by just how gracious he's been, how humble he's been, in spite of all that he's accomplished," Weekes said, "how he continues to inspire not only a lot of other people of color or black people, but just people in general and just be such a strong advocate for the game. It's a Saturday afternoon and he's here in Milton, Massachusetts, just spreading the word of hockey."

And that word needs to continue to be spread, Weekes said, by O'Ree and by others like him. Everyone needs to feel welcome to play hockey, which is ultimately the message of O'Ree and his legacy.
"I think the biggest thing for me is we have to, as a league, continue to make efforts to - and commissioner [Gary] Bettman has done an outstanding job of this, he's been very conscious of that - and he understands the value of global participation," Weekes said. "We can't let our sport just necessarily matter to any one segment.
"I want as many people [as possible] to enjoy our game, to consume our game, to play our game, to be fans of our game, to whatever capacity they have or they want. But I want them to feel included, and I don't want people to feel not represented or misrepresented or under-represented.