O'Ree Skills Weekend incredible experience for players, concludes with Angels game 

ANAHIEM -- Willie O’Ree hung out with the Angels on Saturday. 

The NHL’s first Black player capped the Willie O’Ree Skills Weekend here by watching the Los Angeles Angels play the Boston Red Sox with the more than 26 youth hockey players who traveled from across the United States and Canada to participate in the skills event.

Several Angels players and coaches chatted with O’Ree as he watched them take batting practice before the game and listened to him talk hockey and baseball.

Before he made his historic debut with the Boston Bruins against the Montreal Canadiens on Jan. 18, 1958, O’Ree was also a talented second baseman and shortstop who earned a tryout with the Milwaukee Braves system in 1956 in Waycross, Georgia.

Unsettled by the segregation laws in the South, O’Ree returned to his Fredericton, New Brunswick home after he was released from the tryout and decided to concentrate on hockey.

Angels manager Ron Washington called O’Ree a “very special person” for being a hockey pioneer.

“And to be the first one? You know what it was like and what he had to endure,” said Washington, who presented O’Ree with a No. 22 Angels jersey. "I don’t think I could put up with it... But he’s very jovial, he shares, and you can tell he’s an authentic person.”

Torii Hunter, a retired All-Star outfielder who is a special assistant to Angels general manager Perry Minasian, said he didn’t know much about hockey, but he knew enough about O’Ree that he had to meet him.

“Over time, you’ve seen a lot more African Americans playing the game of hockey, and I’m pretty sure he had something to do with it,” said Hunter, who won nine Gold Gloves during 19 seasons with the Angels, Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers. “I wanted to shake his hand for starting something. I know it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t a cakewalk, I’m pretty sure he went through a lot. A guy like that, he tells a story, you listen.”

O’Ree played 45 NHL games during parts of two seasons with the Bruins (1957-58, 1960-61) and had 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) despite being legally blind in his right eye, the result of and injury sustained while playing junior hockey.

He was named NHL diversity ambassador in 1998 and helped establish 39 grassroots hockey programs and inspired more than 130,000 boys and girls to play the sport.

O’Ree watched the players at the skills weekend scrimmage and do drills Saturday at Great Park Ice & Fivepoint Arena, the Anaheim Ducks practice facility.

“I was just so happy to see these young boys and girls come and just display their skills,” O’Ree told them. “I hope everyone had a good time and had fun.”

Skills participants met with Anaheim Ducks forward Troy Terry and practiced with former NHL forward JT Brown (now a TV analyst for the Seattle Kraken) and former professional women’s hockey forward Blake Bolden, who is a pro scout and Growth and Inclusion specialist for the Los Angeles Kings. Brown and Bolden are both members of the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition.

Rubby Capellan Peña, who plays for the Columbus Ice Hockey Club in Ohio, called the event “my favorite weekend ever.”

“Ten out of 10,” she said. “If anyone asked what’s the best day of my life, I would say this. Just the chance to meet new people in a place I’ve never been before, and to do it with my sister, which was really cool.”