Donald Brashear, who visited Fort Dupont Ice Arena with Willie O’Ree yesterday, skates at a practice at the Kettler Capital Iceplex.

Willie O’Ree came to Washington, D.C. yesterday to enjoy a hockey practice with kids at Fort Dupont Ice Arena. O’Ree was the first African American player in the NHL.

Unlike the first African American players in professional sports like baseball and golf, he wasn’t a big star. But O’Ree is a hero for facing racist fans and opponents to open doors for future generations. He played several seasons and put up 15 points in the NHL in spite of having only one good eye and no depth perception.

Donald Brashear of the Caps joined O’Ree at the practice and said, “It was fun hanging out with the kids.”

It’s great to see the NHL making an effort to showcase some of its heroes in the nation’s capital. After all, Capitals rosters have featured, at times, the second African American player in the NHL, the first African American player claimed in the first round of an NHL draft and the first U.S.-born African American player in NHL history. They also have, in Brashear, the first African American hockey player to make a name for himself as the best fighter in the league.

In spite of all these accomplishments, the achievements of African American hockey players are not very well publicized in this town. I went to a Chris Rock show at DAR Constitution Hall a couple years ago, when he taped an HBO special. “Black people dominate sports in the United States,” Rock famously observed. “20 percent of the population and 90 percent of the final four. We own this [stuff]. Basketball, baseball, football, golf, tennis, and as soon as they make a heated hockey rink we’ll take that [stuff] too.”

The crowd cracked up at the irrelevance and absurdity of the idea of an African American hockey star, and went into further riots of laughter as the ingenious comedian discussed how great African American hockey players would be if any of them could ever brave the refrigeration and learn to skate. I still wonder whether or not he knew that the NHL’s best player at the time was Calgary native Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla.