In the days before Akim Aliu helped thrust the issue of race into the centre of the hockey conversation in November of 2019, he sought the counsel of a friend named Colin Kaepernick.

The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and activist was at the time residing in his ongoing exile from the National Football League — an apparent blackballing that’s seen Kaepernick fail to find NFL employment since the end of the season in which he famously took a knee to protest police brutality and racial inequity. So as much as Kaepernick encouraged Aliu to talk candidly about the perils of growing up Black in a hockey universe that’s predominantly white, he did not spare Aliu a pre-emptive glimpse at the potential consequences of such truth telling.

https://www.thestar.com/sports/hocke...e-the-nhl.html