Color of Hockey: Inaugural Eddie Joseph Memorial Cup honoring England league pioneer

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 the Eddie Joseph Memorial Cup, which honors the late Eddie Joseph, who helped make hockey more diverse and inclusive in England and beyond.

Eddie Joseph said it wasn't easy being one of the few Black semipro ice hockey players in England in the 1980s.

"I remember walking into the ice rink in Sunderland and a 10 or 11-year-old little kid came up to me, rubbed my hand and said, 'Oh, it doesn't come off,'" Joseph told the Color of Hockey in 2014. "That's what the country was like."

Encountering racially insensitive opponents and spectators didn't diminish Joseph's passion for the sport. It fueled it. He became a driving force growing the game in racially and ethnically diverse East London and beyond as a player, coach, general manager and mentor for the Lee Valley Lions and its programs until his death Dec. 7, 2022.

Joseph's legacy is being honored in 2024-25 with the inaugural Eddie Joseph Memorial Cup, an in-season tournament featuring five teams in England Ice Hockey's National Ice Hockey League South 2 division including Lee Valley. Teams play each other twice and the two with the most points at the end play in a final.

The Lions split the first two of their four games, a 4-3 win at Haringey on Sept. 28 and a 7-2 home loss to Peterborough. They host Invicta on Jan. 12, 2025, and visit Chelmsford on a date to be announced.

"It means a lot," said Lee Valley alternate captain James Scott-Joseph, Eddie's son. "It's nice to know people appreciate my dad. He had a lot of friends in the game, throughout the league. Every time we play teams, people come up to me, pay their respects, say kind words. He touched a lot of people in the sport."

Joseph played more than 200 games as a defenseman for Lee Valley before retiring as a player at 32 and before its senior team and hockey programs fell on hard times to the point that the sport was barely played at the Lee Valley Ice Centre.

That changed when Scott-Joseph, then around 10 years old, decided that he wanted to play hockey, which got his father more involved in the rink.

Joseph would become England's version of Neal Henderson, the 2019 U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame inductee who founded the Fort Dupont Ice Hockey Club in Washington, D.C, North America's oldest minority-oriented youth hockey program, or Jason McCrimmon, the 2023 Willie O'Ree Community Hero Award United States winner who in 2014 established Detroit Ice Dreams, a nonprofit that makes hockey more accessible and affordable for children from underrepresented communities.

Joseph helped launch a Hockey is for Everyone-type program at Lee Valley that started with about 15 children on the ice once a week and grew to more than 100 players who reflected East London's rich diversity.

"The people that walk through our door and want to give hockey a go can't afford to buy the kit, can't afford to buy skates," Joseph told the Color of Hockey in 2014. "So what we, people with a like mind to myself, do is we've done fundraisers. We've bought equipment so we can just say to kids, 'Here you go, you can borrow this from us.' I think it doesn't necessarily go down well with our hockey establishment here, but we are more akin to a charity than we are to an ice hockey club."

Joseph's presence and program inspired Karim Kerbouche, a London resident and president of Hockey Algeria. The country won the men's Division II championship of the Amerigol LATAM Cup at the Florida Panthers IceDen in Coral Springs, Florida, on Aug. 25, and the Dream Nations Cup in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in April.

"I first discovered hockey as a child as Eddie was one of a couple non-white players playing at Lee Valley...," Kerbouche said. "I played my junior hockey elsewhere, but as an adult Eddie signed me and I played a season under him for the Lions. He later helped me get my coaching certificate.

"I was in awe of Eddie's dedication to Lee Valley hockey from Learn to Play programs right up to the league team, and also to the local community as a whole. I remember when I did some coaching with him there were a couple of young British Algerian kids, and my mind was blown. A new generation of Algerian players and Eddie made it happen."

Joseph's legacy lives on in his son, a defenseman and forward who, like his father, preaches the gospel of hockey in a soccer-obsessed country.

"Most of us here are volunteers who do it because we love because hockey has touched our hearts, it gives you something in your life, ice hockey," Scott-Joseph said. "We want as many children to get into ice skating as possible, but it can be very expensive. We at Lee Valley offset that by having lots of spare equipment children can (use) with without having to buy it."

Scott-Joseph hopes the Eddie Joseph Memorial Cup will bring more attention to the Lee Valley team and hockey programs, especially if the Lions win the trophy.

"We've got a really good group of guys who understand what Eddie meant to the club and what he meant to wider English ice hockey, so there is definitely motivation there," Lee Valley coach Simon Jones said. "Everyone knew he was 'Mr. Lee Valley' alongside what he meant to the wider game."