Others are more like former Hamilton Kilty B’s goalie Tyrone Garner, who dressed for only three NHL games, or Sean McMurrow, who played only one.īarnes, whose parents emigrated from Jamaica, was raised, and still lives, in Burlington and started collecting cards when he was eight, the year before he graduated from house league to Triple-A hockey. Some, like Jarome Iginla and Grant Fuhr, are in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Most of the players in the collection are African Canadian and all but Herb Carnegie, whom Barnes regards “as the best Black player who never played in the NHL,” suited up for at least one major league game. To be good enough to play even one NHL game is great and I’m really proud that there’ve been 100 because when I stopped as a player in 1990 there might have been 15.” “Some might argue this can help that, because some people have not heard of many of these players. “There should be more diversity in hockey to model the growth of a country that has changed over time,” Barnes says. It begins in two weeks with interviews expanding beyond the useful information on the back of hockey cards and into the stories and personal experiences of Black NHL players. The travelling museum also includes 30 cards from other collections, of players of Indigenous, Asian and Hispanic heritage.īarnes found most of his cards on eBay, which is now sponsoring his My Hockey Hero podcast. For the second successive year, the NHL has included 10 of his cards in its United By Hockey Mobile History Museum, currently on a five-month tour of North America. The movers and shakers in the game have taken notice. There have been just over 100 of them which, Barnes is quick to point out, is not nearly enough. The 53-year-old, an administrator with the Halton District School Board, has collected the rookie trading cards of every Black player who has ever made it into at least one game in the National Hockey League. It’s a definitive and living history of NHL diversity. It really began as a hobby when the pandemic shut down his recreational hockey team.īut Dean Barnes’ hockey card collection is evolving into something far more significant than a personal pastime.
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