Skate Of Play: Herb Carnegie was 33 in March of 1953, playing centre for the Quebec Aces of the Senior QMHL when he featured in the pages of La Patrie. This week that February, Carnegie contributed a pair of assists to a 12-2 Aces shellacking of the Shawinigan Falls Cataracts. Leading the way were two of Quebec’s other centremen, each of whom notched three goals and four assists on the night:  Ludger Tremblay, 32, and a 21-year-old Jean Béliveau, who was a year away from bursting into the NHL. Tremblay was a reliable goalscorer who spent his entire pro career with the Aces. Carnegie, as it’s well known, had the skills and the speed to skate in the NHL, and would have been the league’s first black player, if the call had come. A training camp try-out with the New York Rangers in 1948 was as close as he came. It was before that, back in his hometown of Toronto, that his Junior A coach, Ed Wildey, passed on what Maple Leafs’ managing director Conn Smythe had said: that the Leafs would have signed Carnegie in a minute if only Smythe could have turned him white.