Color of Hockey: Wright was NCAA pioneer at Buffalo

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog for the past eight years. Douglas joined NHL.com in March 2019 and writes about people of color in the game. Today, he profiles former University at Buffalo hockey coach Ed Wright.

A perfect storm led Ed Wright to the hockey coaching job at the University at Buffalo and a largely unheralded place in the sport's history.

It was 1970, and students on the Buffalo campus were embroiled in the protests of those turbulent times. That included some of the university's Black basketball players, who were upset over alleged racial insensitivity by their coach.

The university was anxious to hire a Black coach and happened to have an opening in its hockey program, which had been elevated from club level to NCAA Division II the season before.

"A young man from New York City named Howard Flaster, who was a real hockey nut for the club team, he knew what was going on and knew that, 'If we could find a Black hockey coach, affirmative action is going to pick up that contract,'" Wright said. "They contacted me; that's how that unfolded."

That's how Wright, a former Boston University player, became the first Black coach of an NCAA hockey team. He guided Buffalo for 12 seasons in two stints from 1970-81 and 1986-87, finishing with a record of 138-155 with seven ties.

The accomplishments of the 75-year-old former coach are recognized in Buffalo and Boston, where he played from 1966-69, and in Chatham, Ontario, his hometown, where he's enshrined in its Sports Hall of Fame with the likes of Baseball Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins.

But Wright is largely unsung in the greater hockey world today. Several college hockey officials and experts cited Kelsey Koelzer as the NCAA's first Black hockey coach when she was hired by Arcadia University, an NCAA Division III school outside of Philadelphia, in September 2019.

"It's time he got his due because he's a pioneer," said Mike McGorry, a Buffalo attorney who played for Wright. "Here's a guy who was here in Buffalo for all those years and nobody realized he was the pioneer -- he is the pioneer in terms of the NCAA."

Wright said he didn't know that he had broken a barrier when he accepted the job in 1970. He said it became evident as he attended league meetings and conference and was the only Black coach there.

"Even though it's Division II, it's a pretty big deal, particularly when you would go to the national conventions and you're sitting down with coaches you played against and you're welcomed," Wright said.

But he also said the welcome mat wasn't always rolled out by opposing players and fans.

Racist taunts and gestures occurred at road games. Wright remembers a particularly jarring episode in Oswego, New York, where the seating area behind the visiting bench had to be roped off. But that didn't stop some fans from chanting a racist and homophobic slur at Wright's players.

"You notice it, but try not to let it bother you, get you off your game," he said of the taunts and verbal abuse. "You have to let people be who they are and say, 'That's their problem, not my problem.' My problem is dealing with this team, getting them motivated to be competitive."

He said that when the team stopped at a restaurant on the road it wasn't unusual for the server to not to hand him the bill, assuming that he couldn't possibly be in charge of the traveling party.

"It certainly wasn't easy, particularly in Buffalo," he said. "I was there for 43 years and there are some places you just can't go to in Buffalo. The abuse I took at some places, being refused service. It was a difficult road to hoe."

Campus initially had its challenges as well. Wright recalled that some Black members of the university's basketball team didn't want him hired because he was involved in a predominately white sport.

"They wanted to know, 'What the (heck) can you be all about. Who do you identify with? You certainly can't be in our corner,' because I was a Black hockey player dealing in the white world I dealt with all my life," Wright said. "It took some time before they realized what I was all about and that I was OK."

Wright cut an intimidating figure as a player and coach despite standing 5-foot-3 and weighing about 140 pounds. Several former players offered the same description of him: tough, demanding but fair.

"He was tough as nails and he would run our practice tough as nails," McGorry said. "Monday practice was always, 'Hey boys, gotta sweat them evils out.' Get all of the alcohol and food and everything that we consumed over the weekend, and it was going to get out of our systems on Monday."

Mike Dixon, a former University at Buffalo forward, said Wright commanded the respect of other teams as evidenced by its schedule. Though it was a Division II school, Buffalo played many elite Division I schools.

"We had Clarkson University, St. Lawrence University, Western Michigan and Ohio State come to Buffalo to play us," Dixon said. "Those big schools, they didn't need us. I think coach Wright had everything to do with it. He made a great name for himself at BU, and I think that carried straight through when he started to become a coach."

Wright was a fast, tenacious forward in college who scored 62 points (29 goals, 33 assists) in 65 NCAA games from 1966-69. He was part of Boston University's penalty-killing unit with fellow Chatham native and friend Herb Wakabayashi that once didn't allow an opposing shot on goal in 36 consecutive shorthanded minutes.

"He was nasty," said former Boston University player and assistant Jack Ferriera, now a senior adviser to Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin. "He could skate like the wind and was always in the middle of everything. He didn't have a great scoring touch, but when he was on the ice you knew he was there."

Wright earned his bachelor's degree from Boston University with the expectation of becoming a physical education teacher somewhere. Then Buffalo came calling with the perfect offer: He could coach and teach.

He feels that his greatest accomplishment occurred after he stepped down as coach for the second time in 1987 and formed the university's recreational and intramural program because it "touched so many more students."

But some of his former players said his coaching had a major impact on their lives. Tunney Murchie was so inspired by playing for Wright that he and his family donated $220,000 to have the university's volleyball and basketball practice facility renovated and renamed The Edward L. Wright Practice Facility in 2010.

"He taught me things about hard work ethic that I was not aware of and showed me the ways if you want to achieve certain things in life in terms of success," said Murchie, owner and president of Lackawanna Products Corp., a commodities trading company. "One thing that was very important to me, because I was an average hockey player, was the importance of the books. With his direction, I was able to get my bachelor's and master's degrees, and I was assistant coach with coach Wright for one year while I was working on my master's. His heart is as big as his body."

Wright said the Murchie family donation and facility renaming "touched me through to my soul."

Buffalo discontinued its NCAA hockey program in 1987; it now has American Collegiate Hockey Association and Collegiate Hockey Association club programs on campus.

Wright wasn't through with hockey when he stopped coaching. He worked as a scout for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim for five years after Ferriera, then the team's general manager, offered his fellow Boston University alum the job in 1994.

Among the players he scouted was Steve Rucchin, a University of Western Ontario forward who became the No. 2 pick in the 1994 supplemental draft and went on to center a line with Hockey Hall of Famers Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne. Rucchin is the Ducks' fifth-leading career scorer with 432 points (153 goals, 279 assists) in 616 games.

Wright is retired from hockey and academia and lives in Arizona. He didn't know that other Black coaches followed him into the college hockey ranks.

He was pleased to learn about Koelzer and Division I assistants Leon Hayward at Colorado College and Paul Jerrard at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, as well as Duante Abercrombie at Stevenson University, a Division III school near Baltimore, and Darren Lowe, who coached at the University of Toronto from 1995-2017.

"It really makes me pray for them to hopefully have the strength it's going to take for them to succeed and that they're blessed with success," Wright said. "I have a whole lot of hope for them that they succeed and that they don't have to encounter the pitfalls that I had to deal with."

Photos courtesy of Paul Hokanson, University at Buffalo; Boston University; and Mike Dixon