Big Read: 75 years ago, Larry Kwong made history when he became the NHL’s first Asian player. But to understand his true legacy, his true impact on the game, you must look to all he did before and after his big-league moment. ✍️ SachdevaSonny
Larry Kwong made history as the first Asian player to touch NHL ice. But his immeasurable impact on the game extends far beyond his lone big-league shift.t was a Sunday afternoon tradition. When he was seven years old, already a young hockey devotee, Stan Fischler and his father began journeying from Brooklyn to Madison Square Garden every weekend to take in the games.
“It was ’46-47,” he remembers. “This was a relatively new bunch — usually six or seven guys stayed around the previous year, and then new guys came in. Well, all of a sudden we got this Chinese-Canadian guy on the Rovers. … I could tell pretty quickly that this guy was special.” It didn’t take long for the Vernon, B.C. native’s name to bob and weave its way up and down Eighth Avenue and spread from 50th Street to 51st and beyond.
But that moment of glory wasn’t all that it seemed. Like the famed arena he tore up in his New York days, with its understated façade masking the weight of all that went on within, there’s more to Kwong’s story. Look deeper into the journey that carried the young phenom from Vernon to New York and eventually overseas, and you find the story of a trailblazer who rose to historic heights in the gamethat signature big-league moment, not because of it.
“He told me about Larry when I was a hockey-crazy kid. I remember looking for him,” Soon says. “But you just could not find any information about him. So, you just kind of give up at that point, right? You’re like, ‘Well, if he’s not in my hockey books, he must not have been much of a player.’”It was another of hockey’s barrier-breaking trailblazers who reignited Soon’s interest in Kwong. “Years and years later, I was a student-teacher in Toronto, and I connected with Herb Carnegie,” he says.
Each year, Kwong shared more of his story with Soon, uncoiling the journey that led him to the Garden, to the Forum, to that one-minute shift. “There’s one story that he told. He was young — I think he might have been about 12, 13 — and his team was heading to Vancouver for a tournament,” Heintz says. “The weather was bad, and the team had to cross into the United States to bypass the storm, to get into Vancouver for the tournament. They wouldn’t let my dad cross the border because he was Chinese.
“He gets his big break and goes to New York, and this is the greatest frustration,” Soon says. “There were articles in the New York press that Larry, based on his early reviews when he started playing with the Rovers — he scored in the first game and had speed and skill, and he was already starting to bring people, people are starting to pack MSG to see him — that he was going to be called up based on that. Not just for some sort of publicity stunt, but because he showed real NHL talent.
“He was disappointed,” Heintz says. “He said, ‘I sat there cold on the bench for almost three periods.’Despite the blow, Kwong simply did what he’d always done: he pushed on, refusing to let his ascent be halted by those who wished to hold him back. Though he was still a draw with the Rovers at the Garden, a role it seemed the organization wanted to keep him in, Kwong moved on, signing with the Valleyfield Braves of the illustrious Quebec Senior Hockey League.
“There are a lot of reasons, one being just his humility. He didn’t brag. He didn’t talk,” Soon says. “That was just the generation, the traditional Chinese upbringing — you didn’t boast about yourself. ‘Be seen, not heard. Don’t draw attention.’ So there was that. “I just wanted people to try to understand what a hero Larry was, what that one minute that he played [meant],” he says. “Yes, he wasn’t given a fair chance. But just that one minute was such a huge, important milestone for the Chinese-Canadian community. To show that it was possible. That, you know, you could make it to the very top in this country. Before that, what could you point to?
“Through ’46, ’47, ’48, you can find so many articles that talk about him being that drawing card, going from attendance of 2,500 to 15,000 at MSG,” Soon says. “Basically getting as many people as the Rangers were drawing, for the Rovers’ matinee game.” As for Kwong’s decision to move on from the Garden and head for Quebec, the choice was far from a demotion, or a sign he couldn’t cut it in the NHL, Fischler says. “He had a family, he had a living to make. And there was big dough in the Quebec league in those days. That’s why Herbie Carnegie didn’t go to the Rangers’ farm team. … That’s why Jean Béliveau didn’t come to the Canadiens right away. He was making big dough in Quebec with the Aces, even before that, with the junior team.
“In Europe, oh my gosh, he takes it to another level,” Soon says. “If you read the stories about him in the press in Switzerland when he goes there, in German and Italian and French, it’s like he’s been dropped from the hockey gods. They had never seen anyone like him. The language is like he’s the most incredible hockey player one can imagine. He’s teaching them the game.
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