From the Archive: McKegney Was The NHL's First Black Star

The Montreal native scored a career-high 40 goals with the Blues in 1988

Willie O’Ree made history as the first Black player in the NHL in 1958, but it wasn’t until 1980 that Tony McKegney became the first Black player to be featured as the main star on the cover of THN. McKegney, 22, was just the fourth Black player to make the NHL, joining the trailblazing O’Ree as well as Mike Marson and Bill Riley (both of whom played in the NHL from 1974 to 1979). McKegney, however, was the first Black player to attain NHL stardom.

McKegney, who the Buffalo Sabres drafted 32nd overall in 1978 and who made his NHL debut in ’78-79 at 20, was the first Black player to record a 40-goal season – in 1987-88 with the St. Louis Blues – and ended his career with 320 goals and 639 points in 912 games, which were marks that set the standard for Black hockey players until Jarome Iginla arrived on the scene.

McKegney faced racism on and off the ice during his career, but he rarely spoke publicly about the color of his skin. As he told Frank Orr, the renowned Canadian sportswriter who penned the cover story: “It seems that the better I do as a hockey player, the more it fades into the background.”

THN Archive is an exclusive vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 stories for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com