Former National Hockey League (NHL) netminder Kevin Weekes made 348 appearances for seven different clubs during his playing career.
While Stanley Cup success ultimately eluded Weekes, his subsequent decision to roll the dice and become an ice hockey broadcaster paid massive dividends.
As players on the best no KYC crypto casino platforms will recognise, the odds were stacked against Weekes when he jumped on the broadcasting bandwagon.
Winning the jackpot on a slots game would likely have been easier than a black man succeeding as a broadcaster in a sport traditionally dominated by white participants.
However, after becoming the first black analyst in ice hockey in 2009, Weekes has since become one of the most respected individuals in the sport.
He climbed the ranks to become an analyst for the NHL on ESPN, and has become a viral sensation due to his innovative reporting on social media. Weekes relishes his role in the NHL.
“It’s something I’m very proud of and I’m very humbled by,” Weekes said. “I’m happy to see other people have looked at that as a career opportunity as well, many of whom that I’ve helped, directly and indirectly.
“There’s a lot of factors that indicate the growth of a sport, but when you see different faces from different places and different ages, different genders and different skin tones and different last names and different eye colours, regardless of any of those things, they want to watch your sport and they’re passionate about your sport.
“They want to play the sport. Their daughters or granddaughters play, whatever the case may be – Tampa being a great test case for that, among others – that really is a great indicator of the growth.”
Weekes set to star in animated NHL telecast
Weekes’ status in professional ice hockey has earned him a place in an upcoming collaboration between ESPN, Disney, Pixar and the NHL.
They are teaming up to produce the ‘Inside Out Classic’, a real-time, animated telecast featuring the Washington Capitals versus New York Rangers on April 5.
Fans will be able to watch a virtually created real-time animation of the clash between the Capitals and the Rangers modelled after characters on Pixar’s award-winning franchise Inside Out.
The presentation will blend NHL Edge positional data (NHL Puck and Player Tracking) and Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations’ optical tracking to create dynamic player movements.
The ESPN commentators calling the game – Weekes, Drew Carter and Arda Ocal – will wear virtual reality (VR) headsets for motion capture, immersing them in the animated action.
The voice talent from the original movies – Phyllis Smith (Sadness), Lewis Black (Anger), Tony Hale (Fear) and Maya Hawke (Anxiety) – will contribute to telecast.
This latest production builds on earlier collaborations between ESPN, Disney and the NHL that used animation to attract younger viewers and families.
Weekes’ presence in the commentary line-up underlines his status as someone who ice hockey fans can relate to, regardless of the colour of his skin.
His opinions also resonate with NHL team owners, many of whom reach out to him for advice on tackling complex social justice issues.
Weekes and his wife have leveraged his status and her extensive knowledge of corporate operations to launch a professional consultancy business.
Their collective expertise is not only shaping the modern sporting landscape, but is also having a significant cultural impact in North America.
