Card Game: From 2018, a souvenir card, back and front, issued in Ayr, Ontario, in recognition of Indigenous hockey pioneer Buddy Maracle.

Unremembered for so long by hockey’s history, neglected so adamantly by institutions (looking at you, NHL, New York Rangers, and the Hockey Hall of Fame) that should know and be better, Buddy Maracle is, 90 years after he took his historic turn on NHL ice as a New York Ranger, getting some of the recognition he deserves.

Already this fall the legacy of this Indigenous pioneer has been commemorated with a street-naming, and there’s word, too, that Maracle is slated to feature on an upcoming hockey card.

And then there’s tonight: with Tara Slone and Ron MacLean dropping the puck on a new season of Rogers Hometown Hockey on Sportsnet from the southern-Ontario township of North Dumfries, his story is set to be featured between periods on Monday’s broadcast of the modern-day Toronto Maple Leafs taking on the Blueshirts of Broadway.

You might have read about Buddy Maracle and the hockey establishment’s inattention, maybe even here on Puckstruck. (If not, you can find chroniclings of what we know about one of the NHL’s first Indigenous players and the NHL’s strange reluctance to recognize his achievements, here and here and here … here, too.)

In The News: Maracle Way got the front-page treatment in an end-of-September edition of the Ayr News.

You might remember that Maracle, an Oneida Mohawk who died at the age of 53 in 1958, was born in 1904 in Ayr, the seat of North Dumfries, on the traditional territory of the Six Nations of the Grand River. It was in Ayr, in September, that a street in a new local housing development was named Maracle Way. As has been the regular case in the revival of Buddy Maracle’s story as well as the effort to bring it to the fore over the past several years, Ayr News reporter Irene Schmidt-Adeney was instrumental in this effort; on hand for the unveiling were members of the Maracle family, including his great-great-niece, Christine Pritchard, along with her aunt, Nancy Maracle.

Word of a forthcoming Buddy Maracle hockey card has been afloat for a while — it’s due to debut as part of an Upper Deck promotional set highlighting Indigenous players, including Jimmy Jamieson — though it’s still not quite clear just what that might look like, or when it could be available.

Memories of Maracle: Display at a 2019 event honouring local NHLers as part of National Indigenous Peoples Day (known locally as Solidarity Day) on Six Nations of the Grand River.