Dumba's desire to create lasting change fueled by family, adversity

The Dumba family left their home in Calgary for what was supposed to be a nice trip to Vancouver for 11-year-old Matt's hockey tournament. Instead, he came away with memories stained by racial slurs hurled in his direction, his livid mom defending him, and a tear-filled exit from the rink.

The Minnesota Wild defenseman's road to the King Clancy Memorial Trophy, which he was awarded Sunday, is paved with the joy and pain that comes from pursing something you love where you don't fit in. But focusing on the good -- namely his family -- is what got him this far and fighting to make the hockey world a better place for those who come next is the mission that drives him.
"I just don't think anyone needs to experience that and I hope they don't because hockey's given me so much and I have so much to be thankful for from hockey and what it's given my family," he said. "And it breaks my heart that hockey pushes away so many kids each year because of circumstances like that so that's where I feel the real need is at the hockey level."
The King Clancy Memorial Trophy is awarded annually "to the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community." There are certainly plenty of examples where the 26-year-old Dumba has given back to several causes. Among his efforts, he's committed time and money to Athletes Committed to Educating Students (ACES), a group that works with inner-city children to develop skills that will help them succeed in life after high school. During the season pause, he donated items to auction off to benefit Minnesota at-home school programs. In January, he even stopped to help a stranded motorist on his way home from a Wild loss by filling up a gas can at a nearby station and giving the man's car battery a jump.
But the circumstances of the past few months pushed him to go further.
As a founding member of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, a coalition of current and former NHL players who are working to eradicate racism in hockey, one of his primary goals is to increase diversity, inclusion and education at the youth level so other children don't have to endure the pain of racism and bigotry he and the other HDA members have.
"I played on the higher team every year and being one or two kids of any ethnic background, you're just trying to fit in and that's what hockey culture kind of does to you," Dumba said. "Being able to have your own unique story and family story background, being able to express that is what I think is just lacking.
"I'm doing it for all the kids that have felt that loneliness and don't know where to go when they've been through this. And we're showing with the HDA that everything that we've experienced, that there's other people that have gone through that stuff as well and you're not alone in this and that's why we're fighting as hard as we are to kind of break down those barriers."

As a resident of Minneapolis, he's become invested in the community, especially the multicultural thoroughfare of Lake Street. The diverse makeup of the neighborhood is not unlike that of his own family. Dumba's grandparents, Robert and Edna Hanson had eight children, seven of whom were adopted and are from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Among them was Dumba's mother Treena, who is Filipino. And although his family moved from his hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan, to Calgary when he was 6 because his dad, Charles, who is of German and Romanian descent, had to relocate for a job, Matt maintained relationships with his aunts, uncles, and cousins and has grown closer to them as he's gotten older. The Filipino friends his mother has made over the years are part of the family now too, complete with backyard cookouts featuring whole roasted pigs and his favorite spring rolls.
So in May, when George Floyd, a Black man from Minneapolis, was killed by police officers not far from his beloved Lake Street, and the subsequent protests and demonstrations led to property damage of its many Black, Indigenous and People of Color-owned restaurants and other businesses, it affected him on a deeply personal level.
He started Rebuild Minnesota, a fundraiser that aims to donate $500,000 to the Lake Street Council and the BIPOC-businesses that were damaged. He pledged to match $100,000 in donations and received commitments to match the same amount from the Wild and NHL. As part of the fundraiser, he and his younger brother Kyle, who custom paints sneakers, designed a pair of Air Jordans and raffled it off. They also teamed up for a pair of painted CCM skates that featured some of Lake Street's businesses, HDA imagery, and the phrase "Hockey Needs More Colour." The skates raised $5,225 on NHL Auctions.

Before the Wild entered the bubble in Edmonton, he made a presentation to the team about his experiences with racism in the game, which he says gained a lot of empathy from his teammates, and why he was getting so involved in making changes to hockey culture.
"I think it's really important for us to be beacon of light and shed light on the whole situation, and my teammates, my GM, my coach, have been so positive with all of this," he said. "It's really opened our team up and brought us closer together, I feel.
"I've been able to share those presentations with other teams and HDA members and it's been really cool to see these guys see how they can relate and their sense of empathy when they're hearing these stories. They can relate and a lot of my teammates have kids too and if you don't have kids you have little cousins and you can't imagine them going through something like that."
His boldest act to date came when he walked onto the ice at Rogers Place in Edmonton on the first day of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers wearing an HDA hoodie. He took a deep breath, and with his voice shaking in front of an international audience, he delivered an impassioned speech in support of Black Lives Matter before becoming the first NHL player to take a knee during the "Star-Spangled Banner" to protest racial inequality. Dallas Stars forwards Tyler Seguin and Jason Dickinson, and Vegas Golden Knights forward Ryan Reaves and goalie Robin Lehner did the same during both anthems before games that followed.

To step outside oneself and go against norms in service of others was a lesson he learned long ago from his grandmother, with whom he remained close until she died in 2006 at the age of 81. During her final years, his grandmother had Alzheimer's Disease, which was hard on his family. Dumba's mom tells a story about how he gave his grandma the gift of a snow globe five times in one day because she kept forgetting his gesture.
Edna dedicated her life to caring for young people in need and for a White couple to have children from different races was an oddity at the time. In addition to adopting the seven children, his grandparents ran a foster home, then a receiving home for abused or neglected children that helped thousands of individuals.
"She just had the biggest heart," he said. "She loved so strong and it's something you didn't really understand unless you felt it yourself."
But one old newspaper clipping on Edna's efforts to help children in crisis put her inclusive compassion into perspective.
"There's one article my mom has about the family and all the great things my grandma is doing and then on the flip side of that, on the back page there was a column talking about NFL quarterbacks and if Black quarterbacks had the intelligence to lead a team and it was crazy," he said. "To read that in 2020, I couldn't even wrap my head around it. Like, that's just how it was, right? And it shows how far we've come and how far we still have to go."
Where he and the HDA go from here, he says, is bringing about lasting change with policies to create a more equitable culture in hockey from the grassroots to the highest levels of the game.
"There still needs to be a lot of big steps taken," he said. "And hopefully we can help bridge that gap."