Black NHL Player Wayne Simmonds Retires After Stellar 15-Year Career

One of professional hockey’s most accomplished Black players hangs up his skates. It is very hard to grasp that after playing in over 1,000 National Hockey League regular-season games and notching 526 career points in 15 seasons, Wayne “The Train” Simmonds& recently announced& his retirement.& Simmonds, regarded as one of the most prominent and revered Black NHL hockey players of all time, is hanging up his skates.& The North American Black hockey community has widely admired his career because, in a sport where there haven’t been many examples of Black excellence, Simmonds personified that and more — a Black hockey player who shined at the absolute pinnacle of his sport. Black players like Simmonds give millions of hockey youth hope that they can play professionally in the NHL or at least in what most hockey enthusiasts call “The Show.”& This is a guy who undoubtedly played the game the righteous way and never cheated anyone, not even hockey fans. This was the man who became a one-time all-star and won the 2017 NHL All-Star Game’s Most Valuable Player award — the second Black player to do so since Grant Fuhr in 1986. If there’s one former millennial NHLer who deserves...