Mom got him skating lessons to keep him off the streets. Now he’s an NHL coach.
“She was big on not allowing the streets to take her children,” Duante’ Abercrombie, now 35, recalled. “Plenty of friends in my life are locked up or dead.”
“Right now, I’m dreaming with my eyes open,” said the Toronto Maple Leafs new coaching development associate, who joined a handful of Black coaches in the NHL. He fulfilled the #NHLBOUND hashtag he attached to all his communications, the line he put in allcaps on his résumé: “MY GOAL IS TO COACH IN THE NHL”Coach Neal Henderson cried when Abercrombie called to tell him. He cried again when I called him.
Henderson was the first Black man elected to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2019 for his role in founding and running the Fort Dupont Cannons. It’s the nation’s longest-running, minority-oriented hockey team and has shown thousands of D.C. kids that yes, they can be anything — even what they can’t see.
Abercrombie’s mom took him to the Fort Dupont Ice Arena’s free learn to skate program when he was 6. Skating is messy your first few times, the wobbles, those insane knives you’re supposed to stand on, the wet clothes after all the falls. It wasn’t love at first wipeout for Duante’.“They were moving so fast, the puck was flying,” he remembered.
He remembers waking up Saturday mornings — his mom had a cosmetology license — to a house full of women getting their hair done. She worked hard to afford all the special programs and private schools that she sent Duante’ and his little brother, Devan, to. He helped lead the hockey team to four Maryland Student Hockey League/Mid-Atlantic Prep Hockey League championships. Then he played three seasons professionally in New Zealand, as well as in New York and Pittsburgh. Most of the time, he was the only Black player in the locker room, in the arena. He could outscore and outskate others, but he had to keep convincing them he was serious.When he became a dad, he knew it was a good time to start his life as a coach.
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