Detroit native Everett Fitzhugh trailblazing in hockey as NHL’s first black play-by-play announcer

Everett Fitzhugh is born and raised in Detroit and on the 1990’s period of the Pink Wings. From Hockeytown, his ardour has taken him on a path by way of hockey, resulting in the NHL the place he hopes to be a trailblazer for different African People in and across the sport.

He stated he began to love hockey when he needed to slot in with different children at college, saying “I needed to be cool too.” He started watching the Pink Wings groups of the 1990’s and fell in love. As well as, he was capable of watch Canadian broadcasts of hockeys from Windsor, Ontario. That is the place he started to observe the Edmonton Oilers and felt impressed when he noticed illustration that he felt was missing within the sport of hockey. The Oilers had as much as three black hockey gamers on their roster without delay, which was a welcoming signal to Fitzhugh, a hockey fan from Northwest Detroit.

From there, he graduated from Ann Arbor Pioneer Excessive College and started his hockey broadcasting profession at Bowling Inexperienced State College. He jumped round as a broadcaster by way of the game of hockey and ultimately landed a job with the Seattle Kraken. He is in his second yr with the staff and stated it was at all times his dream to make it to the NHL. With out essentially making an attempt to make historical past, Fitzhugh grew to become the NHL’s first black full-time play-by-play announcer. He hopes he evokes and welcomes different hockey followers of shade, simply as he was impressed watching the Oilers of the 90’s. It is a function he finds particular and one he would not take flippantly.

Returning to Detroit to name Kraken video games in opposition to the Pink Wings is one thing very particular to Fitzhugh. Rising up as a Pink Wings fan, he stated you by no means know particular a spot is to you, till you come again doing the job you like. Within the crowd, when the Wings performed the Kraken, Fitzhugh had his mom and different household and buddies within the crowd. Whereas he hopes the Kraken win the video games he calls, he stated he at all times may have a comfortable spot for the staff in pink and white, sporting the winged wheel.