Willie O’Ree almost didn’t make the Hockey Hall of Fame. He almost didn’t even have a lasting professional hockey career.

For the first black player to compete in the National Hockey League, it nearly ended during his first trip to Chicago in 1960, his second year in the NHL. An opposing Blackhawks player made some incendiary racist remarks that Willie initially brushed off. But then things got physical and the two were ejected, with O’Ree getting his two front teeth knocked out for his troubles.

Forced to spend the remainder of the game in the locker room isolated from his team, O’Ree fumed and contemplated his future in hockey.

“I just sat down on the bench and meditated for about eight minutes, and I said, ‘You don’t need to take this type of abuse. You can go back to your hometown. You don’t need to be involved with this,’” he recalled at a Thursday press conference on Capitol Hill.

He was tired of being judged for his race, and not his ability on the ice.