Radio host turns filmmaker to tell story of Black youth hockey team in Detroit

More than a decade ago, Gerald McBride was invited to a University of Michigan men’s hockey game by a client whose son was playing for the opposing team. It was his first time attending a hockey game and it made a lasting impression on him.

“It is completely sold out and I’m the only Black guy in the entire arena,” said McBride, who left the event wanting to know more about the history of Black players in the National Hockey League and wound up inspired to make a movie.

On Friday, “Black Ice: The Rhythm” opens for a weeklong run in metro Detroit at metro Detroit theaters Emagine Canton, the Birmingham 8 Powered by Emagine and the Riviera Powered by Emagine in Farmington Hills. It also will be screening at Emagine Birch Run near Flint and another Emagine theater in Minneapolis.

Directed and written by McBride, a longtime Detroit radio host and producer of TV and radio advertisements, the film is a contemporary story that also pays tribute to the long, unsung history of Black hockey players — a legacy that goes back to a Black hockey league formed in 1895 in Nova Scotia.

It follows a gifted young amateur hockey player, Robert (Buck) Taylor, who must put aside his dreams of going pro after a fight with a racist white player sends him to prison.  Out on parole, he is tasked with coaching a fledgling youth hockey team at an inner-city Detroit rink that is in danger of being shut down to line the pockets of some local politicians.

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“Black Ice: The Rhythm” has a narrative about an underdog team that touches similar emotional chords to “The Mighty Ducks” and “The Karate Kid." It's aimed at families and is described as faith-friendly. Winning is one aspect of the team's quest, but so is making good choices and believing in yourself.

For McBride, who’s celebrating 45 years in radio, the project was more than a new twist to a lengthy career. “It wasn’t about making a bunch of money, but a message that needed to be shared,” he said in a recent phone interview.

The Mumford High graduate had his first brush with radio in 1975 when he represented his school as a Soul Teen Reporter through a program at WJLB-FM (97.9). “Each student would get the opportunity to go to the radio station and report on what was happening at their high school each week,” he recalled. "Once I got a chance to get inside the radio station and then hear myself on the radio, I got bit by the radio bug and have been doing it ever since.”

After attending the Specs Howard broadcasting school (now also covering digital media and graphic design and part of Southfield's Lawrence Technological University), McBride worked in radio in Rochester, New York, and Flint before joining WMXD about 30 years ago.

He now hosts "Old School House Party” on Saturdays from 7 p.m. to midnight. A segment of the program, “Battle of the Old School,” lets listeners vote on showdowns between music greats, like Luther Vandross vs. the Isley Brothers,  Toni Braxton vs. Anita Baker and, most recently, Michael Jackson vs. Prince. The show is syndicated to about 30 stations across the country, according to McBride.

After that memorable U-M hockey game, McBride started working on an idea for a script involving a Black hockey player. “This story just started coming together,” he said. He kept writing draft after draft, took screenwriting classes and even got positive feedback from some Hollywood producers.

With no financial offers on the table, McBride was done with waiting by early 2022. “I just decided to step out on my own, step out on faith, I should say,” he explained. It was then that he started doing preproduction. Shortly before filming started that spring, he was able to secure an SBA loan for $200,000 and later supplemented that amount with some of his own savings.

In the end, McBride was happy that he had so much control over the final product. “I’m so glad that I took this route, that I had an opportunity to learn every aspect of making the movie, distributing the movie, just wearing so many hats when we’re making a movie with an ultra-low budget film. I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world," he said.

McBride worked with Productions Plus in Bingham Farms to cast the main actors. For the critical part of Coach Taylor, he chose Arthur Cartwright, an actor and filmmaker who won a prestigious 2018 Gilda Award for emerging artists from Kresge Arts in Detroit.

For the young hockey players, he turned to Detroit Ice Dreams, a nonprofit that promotes and subsidizes ice-related sports, mainly hockey, across the region for youths ages 3 to 17. He credits Cynthia Wardlaw, the vice president and program manager of Detroit Ice Dreams (and a devoted hockey mom herself), for connecting him with teens King Moore, Jovonn Crittenden and Tyler Moore, who filled the key roles of Flash, Mike and Jojo.

’They had been skating since they were 5 or 6 years old with Detroit Ice Dreams,” he said. “What a  blessing that I was able to find all of these jewels right here in the city of Detroit.”

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The majority of the hockey scenes were done at the Jack Adams Memorial Arena at the City of Detroit's Adams Butzel Complex. Certain scenes also were done at Oak Park Ice Arena. McBride says he is grateful to Detroit for allowing the Jack Adams Memorial Arena ice rink to stay open beyond its usual hockey season in order for filming to take place.

In recent years, the NHL has spread the word on Black achievement in hockey through a mobile museum called the Black Hockey History Tour.

And just this April, Tennessee State University got closer to being the first historically Black school to inaugurate an ice hockey program by hiring Duante Abercrombie as its coach. Tennessee State’s plan for the team was announced in 2023 when the NHL draft occurred in Nashville.

McBride hopes “Black Ice: The Rhythm” will reach audiences all over America to let people know about the young Black athletes who are involved with hockey through Detroit Ice Dreams.  

“We’re known as Hockeytown in Detroit, but just 15 minutes from where we have Little Caesars Arena and the Red Wings and the Hockeytown restaurants and all of these great things, there is a whole other world of hockey that people don’t know about.”

He believes that once the Emagine showings demonstrate "that we were able to fill some seats here in these four cities, this movie will have legs to go across the country.”

McBride says the lesson of the film applies to his own leap into filmmaking.

“If anybody can walk away with something from the movie, making the right choices in life would be one of the main things. And, of course, the other one is don’t be afraid. Just believe. A lot of times, we’re afraid to step out on our dreams and our ideas.

“But if we’re not afraid," he added, "we can step out on faith and believe it can happen.”

For tickets and more information on "Black Ice: The Rhythm," go to its official website at therhythmmovie.com. Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.