Name: Meet the Boyds: The black hockey family you’ve never heard of in the NHL
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Meet the Boyds: The black hockey family you’ve never heard of in the NHL

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Jun 19, 2020Grace, humility and respect is the earnest, honest approach the Boyds have taken when discussing how their family is like so many others.But that’s the thing. Their family is not like other families. Especially those in the NHL.NHL agent Eustace King has joked with Joel Boyd before about the fact they are the “First Black Family of Hockey” because of what they have achieved. Dr. Joel Boyd is an orthopedic surgeon and the first black team physician in league history, a position he has held with the since their inception. His daughter, Kendall Boyd-Tyson, is the vice president for strategy and analytics for NHL Seattle. His son Kyle also works for NHL Seattle as the team’s youth and community development/training director.“There has always been a lot of encouragement for us to do well. That has always been there,” Kyle said. “We have always had a lot of support around academics and sports and the arts, as well. It’s always been that, and I don’t know if it is an adage, but it’s knowing sometimes you have to work hard and sometimes work twice as hard. That is part of the black experience in America. We grew up in a family where there was obviously the expectation of hard work but there was a lot of support.“I think my sister would agree: We would not have gotten there without the support of our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and the community around us.”Boyd grew up in Washington, D.C. He loved sports and considered himself to be a good enough high school football player who once considered trying to play at the University of Oklahoma or the University of Maryland. He was a high school senior when the first came into the NHL as an expansion team. Going to those games is where he saw Mike Marson skate for the first time.Understand something. Willie O’Ree made his debut in 1958 and last played in the NHL in 1961. Then there was Marson in 1974 – 13 years since O’Ree last played – taking the ice as the second black player in league history. In D.C., which at that point was still a predominantly black city. Flying around the ice with a full-blown afro.“We’re like, ‘Wow. That’s huge. I had no idea. They have a black guy playing hockey,’” Boyd said. “It was like, “OK. I gotta see this.”Boyd took a visit to Bucknell University. He decided to play football there while also taking the necessary courses to cover pre-med requirements. He did a graduate season of football. In that time, he took even more courses while taking the MCAT. From there, he went to Temple for medical school. Being at Bucknell meant he was not around hockey that much anymore but that soon changed.He did a fellowship in London, Ontario, which put him around hockey in a medical capacity. He then moved to Minneapolis and joined the Minnesota State High School League in 1992, serving as the medical director for more than a decade. That allowed him to be a central figure in the Minnesota boys state hockey tournament, one of the premier high school events in the nation.Then came the major push that started Boyd on his trajectory. A friend recommended he should go to the United States Olympic &amp; Paralympic Committee’s training camp in Colorado Springs, Colo. so he could be certified to work as a team doctor at an Olympic Games. He took a six-week course and was then used for events. Both of USA Basketball men’s and women’s teams got an opportunity to have Boyd, an orthopedic surgeon, work with them. So did USA Hockey. Joel Boyd was becoming more visible and more popular.Lou Vairo, the director of special projects for USA Hockey, was one of the people Boyd befriended. They established a relationship and level of respect that was already in place when Vairo told Joel Boyd something that resonates even to this day.Vairo told Joel Boyd that “hockey needs you” and that “you should stick with hockey.”By that point, Boyd was fully immersed in hockey. He was the team physician for youth teams in USA Hockey’s setup. He was the team physician for the United States men’s national team at the 1998 world championships. He had the same post with the U.S. men’s national team for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, while serving in the same role with the U.S. women’s national squad.That was also around the time when there were rumblings the NHL was going to grant an expansion team to the Minneapolis-St. Paul market.“I really wanted to be involved with that,” Boyd said. “I sort of set out a strategic plan to make that happen. … I knew already enough about sports. Everyone knew I was qualified. A number of people who knew me knew I was qualified to do the job. Since the North Stars had left, I had done as much hockey or more hockey than anyone else in the area who had done sports medicine. I worked with the Minnesota Moose and I worked with a roller hockey team called the Arctic Blast.”It led to Boyd making several connections, even receiving a letter of recommendation from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. Boyd interviewed with the Wild and has remained their team physician ever since.He had professional success. But a commitment to family was a priority for Boyd and his wife, Cheryl. They raised their three children in their Eden Prairie home. Kasey, Kendall and Kyle were all academically strong students, in addition to being active in sports. Both Kasey and Kyle were members of the boys’ hockey team at The Blake School, while Kendall played for the girls’ basketball team.Kendall did play hockey but basketball, which is also a winter sport in Minnesota, remains her first love. Her first job in sports was being a ballgirl for the Minnesota Lynx for three years. But her path into sports was different than most. She earned a sociology degree from Emory University, while also earning an industrial and system engineering degree from Georgia Tech. During her time at Georgia Tech, she interned at Coca-Cola, where she was part of a recycling program held at Turner Field, which was then the home of the Atlanta Braves.“We started off and I had to design the study and picked a certain number of games, and we sorted what was in the recycling bins after each game and what was in the trash cans after each game,” she said. “We’d come and see how many things came into the recycling bin and how many of those things went into the trash when they should have been in the recycling bin. Afterward, it was about coming with recommendations on improving recycling collections and it was about bin placement. (The Braves) said, ‘That’s fantastic. Can you stay and we will do it next season?’“I stayed on to do the study after we made the changes and implemented those recommendations.”Kendall graduated from Georgia Tech with the goal of being a consultant. She was hired by Accenture in a role she held for four years. But in 2015 she decided that she wanted to go to business school to hone her financial analyst skills. The plan was to use that experience to work with local and state governments.She went to the Yale School of Business, where she began exploring her options. One of her friends and mentors suggested she try sports because she talked about it “all the time.” From there, a seed was planted and it led to an internship with the LPGA. Kendall graduated from Yale in 2017 and went to work for TopGolf in a corporate development and strategy role.But it was not all about studies at Yale. She was part of the school’s club hockey team and later became a captain. They practiced once a week, with everyone separated by their skill level.“It’s a global business school. The majority of the students have not only not played hockey but can’t skate,” she said. “After my first year, the fact I could skate put me in the intermediate group, borderline advanced. I volunteered to be a captain. Not because I was qualified from a skill perspective but because I was interested in teaching people the game and exposing people to the game. It was my mission to go get all the different minorities, women, people from Asian countries, people who are not from the States, people who are from the South and have never really been on the ice before, to say, ‘Hey, you should give hockey club a shot.’”Kendall said the club team plays one game a year where the first-year students face the second-year students for the Garstka Cup. She said practically the entire school watches the game but the exciting part was seeing someone who was not able to skate the beginning of the year score a goal.“That is when the whole school goes nuts and everyone on the bench is excited because that is a moment they know they are never going to have again, most likely,” Kendall said. “That’s why I wanted to be a captain. It was to be a part of those special moments for people.”Even with the work she did at Yale, Kendall has no problem admitting that Kyle was the one with a great passion for hockey. Kyle is the better hockey player and Kendall would come to him for advice on what she could do to teach others on the team.Kyle went to Dartmouth, where he graduated with a history degree while also playing club hockey at the famed Ivy League institution. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis. He worked for Teach For America and spent four years working at Buckingham Browne &amp; Nichols School in Cambridge, Mass., until he moved to Seattle to teach at Lakeside School.There was a day when Kyle went to an open skate at a rink in Renton, a Seattle suburb, and struck up a conversation with a person there. That person was NHL Seattle CEO and team president Tod Leiweke. They discussed a number of things, including Kendall, and it ultimately led to NHL Seattle hiring the two siblings.A chance meeting with an NHL executive is one thing. But it is another when that same executive has history with your family.“I was on my way to a Minnesota Wild game. Kyle sent me a text saying, ‘Tod says hello,’” Joel Boyd recalled. “I was like, ‘Tod who?’ I have no idea who Tod is. He said that I must not have gotten the picture. I was trying to get to the game. I get to the game and he sent me a picture of himself and Tod Leiweke. Then, I call him and Tod is still there. Tod gets on and starts talking.“Tod was the first president of the Minnesota Wild and I was already there when he was. Tod and I knew each other from Day 1.”Both Kendall and Kyle shared what it was like having a father who was a successful surgeon who also worked in sports and how they found it inspiring.Kyle said both his parents are people who lead by example. He said his father uses a sense of humor to bring people into a conversation. Seeing how people gravitated and reacted toward his dad was something he admired.“When I was a younger person, I was a little more frustrated because I wanted to go where I wanted to go and he would not stop talking to every person,” Kyle joked. “But to see how people viewed him and how they are in awe of what he has done for them, whether it was a friend of a friend of a friend or a colleague, it was a lesson that I took to heart. For me, growing up, I just wanted to be a person who made a difference in people’s lives and make the world better.“It was the same thing with my mom. She worked in education and worked in schools and did admission and financial aid work to help people get education for their children and help them get opportunities. They were people-first people.”Kendall said her parents raised her and her brothers to believe in trying new things with the idea that they should never be afraid to fail. That they stressed the importance of education while also having a sense of community. She shuffled through those early memories of her childhood when her dad was a team doctor and they went to events like Augsburg University football games or Minnesota Moose hockey games.She just viewed those experiences as fun times her and her siblings got to spend with their dad.“This is why I see all this as God’s plan,” she said. “It’s not like my dad worked in hockey and said, ‘You have to play and here, go intern with the Wild.’ He did not do any of that. I was at Accenture in Atlanta and Kyle was teaching and in St. Louis. I think we’re here at this moment truly by the grace of God. That is why it had to be God’s plan.”(Photos courtesy of Kendall Boyd-Tyson)

Jun 19, 2020Grace, humility and respect is the earnest, honest approach the Boyds have taken when discussing how their family is like so many others.But that’s the thing. Their family is not like other families. Especially those in the NHL.NHL agent Eustace King has joked with Joel Boyd before about the fact they are the “First Black Family of Hockey” because of what they have achieved. Dr. Joel Boyd is an orthopedic surgeon and the first black team physician in league history, a position he has held with the since their inception. His daughter, Kendall Boyd-Tyson, is the vice president for...

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Meet the Boyds: The black hockey family you’ve never heard of in the NHL

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