Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson says he didn’t know who Willie O’Ree was growing up — not even while he was starring as the “knuckle puck”-shooting Russ Tyler in the Mighty Ducks movie franchise.
But once he learned of O’Ree, who broke the NHL’s color barrier in 1958, and the push to award him the Congressional Gold Medal — the highest civilian honor the United States Congress can bestow — he was all-in.
Thompson penned a first-person essay on NHL.com Wednesday stumping for O’Ree to receive the medal, citing O’Ree’s perseverance in the face of long odds during his career and his activism off the ice.