In celebration of Black History Month, Hockey Alberta is proud to share stories from across the province’s hockey community.
In July 2023, John Utendale was inducted into the Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame, in recognition of his contributions to breaking the colour barrier in professional hockey.
In December, the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame announced that Utendale would be recognized further as a member of the ASHOF’s 2024 Induction Class. The induction ceremony is scheduled for Friday, May 24.
We became aware of John Utendale and his accomplishments because in the middle of the pandemic in February 2021, we were looking for some Alberta-based hockey stories for Black History Month.
During a general online search, and one of the items that came up in the search was a Facebook post the previous year from the Provincial Archives of Alberta pointing out that the first Black hockey player to sign an NHL contract was John Utendale of Edmonton with the Detroit Red Wings in 1955.
Some online research. We found an obituary published in the Edmonton Journal after John’s death in 2006. Not only had John been a trailblazer as a hockey player, but his leadership continued in post-secondary education after moving to Washington State.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of information available more than 50 years after John’s playing days. Some statistical information, a few photos and short stories, but overall not a lot of detail about the man who could have been the first Black player to play in the NHL. We pieced together a basic biographical story from what we could find, and Hockey Alberta and Hockey Canada posted it on their websites on February 3, 2021 for Black History Month.
It was an opportunity to share an interesting story that more people needed to know and it was a pretty good story to start off Black History Month.
Then things started to happen.
Someone shared the link with Mickey, John’s wife, who contacted Hockey Canada, who put her in contact with Hockey Alberta. A few emails were exchanged, and the process got started to put together a nomination package for John for the AHHF.
The University of British Columbia reached out for more details and did a story on their website because John had studied at UBC.
KIRO 7 News in Washington reached out in October 2021, and did a story on John’s life and career leading into the home opener that year for the Seattle Kraken.
The Kraken honoured John in February 2022 for Black History Month, including an in-game video tribute.
Seattle Kraken Tribute Video >
In February 2023, there was another tribute evening for John Utendale – this time by the Edmonton Oilers. They were hosting the Detroit Red Wings, the NHL team John had signed with, in the city where John was born.
Finally, on July 23, 2023, the long-awaited AHHF Gala occurred in Canmore. It was an evening of learning a bit about life in the 1950s in hockey, and the family, and even how John and Mickey met (he was originally going out with her sister).
It was also really neat to be reminded of just how connected we are, and how small the world really is – even multiple decades later. Folks like Bobby Olynyk (a fellow inductee that evening) and Terry Ledingham (an inductee in 2016) came up to Robb Utendale (John’s son) to talk about having seen John play for the Oil Kings and the Flyers in the 1950s.
Now, it’s only a few more months until the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame induction evening on May 24. Hopefully there will more stories connecting folks in the room that evening with John’s accomplishments and recollections six or seven decades prior.
