Color of Hockey: Wheeler to be inducted into ECHL Hall of Fame

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Shawn Wheeler, a retired player and coach who will be among the five inductees into the ECHL Hall of Fame on Jan. 15 in Savannah, Georgia.

Shawn Wheeler didn’t see it coming.

The 57-year-old retired forward and coach said he was surprised when he received the call in November informing him he had been elected to the ECHL Hall of Fame.

“Shocked, really,” Wheeler said. “Never thought about it. Never knew I was in consideration. I was, like, ‘Wow, really?’”

It shouldn’t shock anyone that Wheeler is among the five inductees who will be honored at a luncheon in conjunction with the 2024 Warrior/ECHL All-Star Classic in Savannah, Georgia, on Jan. 15, selection committee co-chair Joe Ernst said.

Wheeler averaged 1.11 points per-game with 325 points (152 goals, 173 assists) in 294 games in seven ECHL seasons with Greensboro, Hampton Roads and Charlotte from 1990-97. He scored at least 30 goals in four of his five full ECHL seasons, including a league career-high 36 with Greensboro in 1991-92.

He won the league’s 1996 Riley Cup championship with Charlotte and participated in three All-Star Games, tied for fifth-most in ECHL history. 

After retiring as a player, Wheeler made history as the ECHL’s first Black coach with Charlotte, and had a 43-48-14 record from 1998-2000. 

“Just his overall body of work,” said Ernst, the ECHL senior vice president of hockey operations. “If he wasn’t putting up points, he was sticking up for his teammates, especially in those days when there were many, many tough guys on teams back in the '90s that he had to stand up to pretty much every night. And he scored 30 goals or more. He was a Swiss Army knife that could do pretty much anything asked of him by his team and his coach.”

Wheeler enters the ECHL Hall with forward Scott Burfoot, who had 427 points (148 goals, 279 assists) in 298 games for Erie, Roanoke Valley, Hunstville and Richmond from 1991-98; Buffalo Sabres scout Brad Dexter, who is sixth all-time among ECHL defensemen with 361 points (67 goals, 294 assists) in 464 games with Raleigh, South Carolina, Pensacola and Victoria from 1996-2004; Washington Capitals director of minor league operations Jason Fitzsimmons, who went 52-25-10 in 93 games as a goalie for Columbus and South Carolina from 1992-98, helped lead South Carolina to the inaugural Kelly Cup championship in 1997 and later went 188-126-46 and the team’s coach from 2003-07; and June M. Kelly, who served as the administration and financial overseer in the early days of the league that was founded in 1988. Her husband, Patrick J. Kelly, was its first commissioner.

Wheeler becomes the second Black player in the ECHL Hall, joining Joel Martin, a goalie who got the call in 2022. Martin is in his second season as coach and director of hockey operations for Kalamazoo, the Vancouver Canucks ECHL affiliate.  

“It’s not the NHL, it’s not the NFL, it’s not the NBA, but this means a lot to me and to the people that played and knew how hard it was and the successes and failures that we had at our level,” said Wheeler, now a pharmaceutical executive sales rep in Charlotte. “I’m an individual that played hard and could mix it up a little bit and had my cup of coffee at the next levels, which helped develop the league.”

Wheeler had four points (three goals, one assist) in 21 games with Maine, Hershey and Providence of the American Hockey League from 1991-96, and nine points (six goals, three assists) in 45 games with Peoria of the International Hockey League in 1992-93. 

Born in Mount Vernon, New York, and raised in Canada, Wheeler spent his formative years playing hockey in Toronto and Fort McMurray, Alberta, where his mother moved the family to find work in the oil industry.

“She couldn’t land a job at Syncrude or Suncor," Wheeler said, "so she drove taxis and had owned three, four or five, I can’t remember how many cabs. She busted her butt and put them on the road, and that paid our bills.”

Wheeler developed into a high-scoring junior player, with 115 points (66 goals, 49 assists) in in 97 games with Hobbema of the Alberta Junior Hockey League from 1984-86.

He went on to play for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, an NCAA Division III school that heavily recruited him.

“I didn’t know where Stevens Point was until the Greyhound dropped me off,” he said.
The central Wisconsin campus quickly learned who Wheeler was; he had 154 points (76 goals, 78 assists) in 136 games from 1986-90, helped guide the school to back-to-back NCAA Division III championships in 1989 and 1990 and was named tournament MVP in 1989.

Wheeler is fifth all-time in goals for Stevens Point (76), fifth in game-winning goals (10) and second in game-winning goals in a season (six). He also scored the fastest goal to open a period in school history -- six seconds against Bemidji State in February 1989.

He was inducted in the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Hall of Fame in 2016.

“At the end of the day, any hall of fame you’re inducted to tells me that you were considered one of the best,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s underwater basket weaving, I don’t care if it’s the University of Louisiana or UCLA, your school, your league put you into their hall of fame. They’re telling everybody that, ‘This was a significant individual, man or woman, that played for us, and we respect what they did.’”