Growing up in Detroit, the Red Wings were very much part of Everett Fitzhugh's life. How could they not be? After an extended slump from the late 1960s into the 1980s, it was just as Fitzhugh was coming of age as a sports fan that the Red Wings rose to the top of the NHL again with back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1997 and 1998.
But for all of the team's success in that stretch, there was not a single player on the Red Wings roster that looked like Fitzhugh — or, for that matter, that looked like over three-quarters of Detroit's residents: African American.