‘Black Ice’ Review – The Multilayered History Of Black Hockey Players

Black Ice focuses on three angles of Black athletes in the sport of hockey. Each angle is a suitable entry point into the often ignored sect of the sport, but since the documentary attempts to juggle each thread equally, the movement through the overall topic feels somewhat frantic and unfocused. Halfway through the documentary, the pace settles in, mainly because all three storylines finally overlap. The film brings many Black men and women to the forefront to discuss solutions to racism and discrimination in the sport, but doesn’t ask the victimizers to do any of that lifting. The only non-Black person in the film putting forth any effort is the white father of a mixed high school aged hockey player recent harassed and called racial slurs mid game.

Black Ice details the participation and harassment of Black men and women in professional, collegiate, high school, and semi-pro hockey. Partially based on the book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925, the film’s production team includes Drake and Lebron James. The three sides that receive most of the film’s attention are the origins of the sports Black leagues in Canada, a high school player who’s currently fighting for justice after racist harassment, and the plight of current professional hockey players, such as P. K Subban ,and their ongoing battle for equal treatment. All three stories rotate focus throughout and even overlap when it’s revealed that Akim Aliu, a retired hockey player, is a mentor for the high schooler as he works through his legal battle. 

From a historical standpoint, Black Ice is great for a newcomer to the sport and for the naive fan. If a viewer knows very little about hockey and even less about Black athletes in the sport, the film will fill in the essential information. For a casual sports fan, football and MMA/UFC are probably the violent contact sports we often compare. Football predates hockey by 6 years, debuting in 1869 and 1875 respectively, yet the film might actually lead to comparisons with baseball and the Negro Leagues. According to the film, ancestors of enslaved Blacks were playing hockey decades before the MLB was integrated. Additionally, the Colored Hockey League was all but destroyed before either the MLB or NHL was integrated. Yet similar to the Negro Leagues, the CHL introduced foundations of the game, such as the slap shot, that go uncredited today.

Amid the fascinating and heartbreaking history, Black Ice does struggle with preoccupation. The three storylines mentioned earlier all deserve a little more attention in the film, but there isn’t enough time to feature all of them properly. The film could have devoted hours to the first men to integrate as well as the men playing presently, so the overall framing of the documentary unfortunately feels a little off. Viewers might notice that there’s merely too much untold history for one film, making Black Ice feel more like an introduction.

The production value is high and audiences may have appreciated if even more budget had gone to the behind the scenes footage or an extended series. We move through multiple interviews of current players and older, but the documentary doesn’t balance that footage out with present day footage and this felt like a missed opportunity. The documentary only provides audio from the early days when the daughter of Herb Carnegie, the best Black player to never play in the NHL, shares it with us. The missing opportunity is the sheer lack of athletes from each generation, their stats, their footage, their range of Northern and Canadian accents. 

Overall, Black Ice is a worthy view for the casual historian, sports fanatic, or documentary lover. Hopefully the film will lead to longer stories on the many topics introduced.

Black Ice is currently playing in select theaters and is available on Digital and VOD courtesy of Roadside Attractions. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yitZRRgo1Pw]