Dean Barnes loves to show off his hockey card collection.
“This is cards of 100 black and biracial players who have played at least one NHL game over the period of starting with Willie O’Ree from 1958 to present time,” said Barnes, who had his cards on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame exhibit at the Memorial Cup in Saginaw, Mich.
Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, Barnes only had a few role models in professional hockey.
“My connection is with Tony McKegney, who grew up in Sarnia and played for the Buffalo Sabres,” added Barnes.
The writer, speaker, and podcaster from the GTA has believed to be the biggest Black hockey card collection.
“It's so special because diversity and inclusion is so important,” said Barnes. “Like many other sports, there's many people look up to someone who looks like them. This collection is important for people to have an opportunity to look at stars like Jarome Iginla. Iginla once said that he wanted to be NHL because he knew Tony McKegney played hockey.”
Barnes is often invited to take his collection all over North America. This week, the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) asked him to put it on display at its national championship.
“It’s about raising awareness and amplifying the rich black hockey history people,” stressed Barnes. “There is a black hockey history that many people may not know about. Now I can share this with today's generation and there is so many players who have played at least one NHL game.”
Barnes also has a podcast called ‘My Hockey Hero’ and has interviewed 29 of the players he has in his card collection.
He has even started expanding to CHL cards like London Knights defenceman Isiah George.
Earlier in the tournament, Barnes was invited to speak to 3,000 school kids on the topics of diversity and inclusion.
“We interviewed some of the fans of the game, one of the young kids was from Detroit, young black child,” said Barnes. “He talked about how much seeing this collection meant to him and how it's so important for him to have someone to look up to."
