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”Johnny Hockey” is getting an additional title: part owner.

Calgary Flames star forward Johnny Gaudreau is a member of an NHL-laden ownership group that purchased an equity stake in the U.S. Hockey League’s Dubuque Fighting Saints on Thursday. The group includes Buffalo Sabres forward Zemgus Girgensons http://www.buffalobillsteamonline.com/tre_davious-white-jersey , former Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma, and Florida Panthers executive chairman Peter Luukko.

Gaudreau and Girgensons were teammates on the Dubuque team that won the USHL championship in 2011. Luukko’s son Nick was also on the team. Their ownership group is titled Saints4Life Acquisitions.

”The first day I stepped into Dubuque, I knew it was a special place,” Gaudreau said in a statement issued by the league. ”I have a lot of special memories in Dubuque, including winning it all in 2011. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Gaudreau was the USHL’s rookie of the year in 2011, when he was also drafted by Calgary. He eventually went on to win college hockey’s Hobey Baker Award at Boston College.

Girgensons described being part of the ownership group as a way to pay back the team for playing a key role in his development. A year after moving to North America from his native Latvia, Girgensons spent two seasons with the Fighting Saints and was preparing to play college hockey at Vermont before being selected by Buffalo in the first round of the 2012 draft.

”It’s a team that really got me to where I am today,” Girgensons told The Associated Press by phone.

Never envisioning the opportunity to be an owner, Girgensons joked he might need to contact Sabres owner Terry Pegula for a few pointers.

Edmonton Oilers president and general manager Peter Chiarelli will remain a part owner of the team. Philip Falcone, who previously was a part owner of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, is departing as the Fighting Saints’ principal owner.

The Fighting Saints have won two championships since returning to the USHL in 2010 following a nine-year absence.

Luukko immediately jumped aboard when he saw how his son’s experience in Dubuque helped prepare him for college.

”I know from my son’s perspective and others that I’ve talked to, they come in as pretty mature people heading into their university experience,” he said.

”Being involved in the National Hockey League for over 25 years, this is a chance to be able to be part of the development of young players and what is actually a good business also Anthony Miller Bears Jersey ,” Luukko said. ”Listen, I don’t belong to a country club, so really this will be my fun.”

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This year’s NFL season featured two of America’s pastimes: football and race, with pre-game protests dividing fans along color lines and making Sunday afternoons among the most segregated hours in the country.

While some fans would prefer players stick to sports, many black athletes have chosen a different path by protesting, making people uncomfortable.

”The whole purpose of the demonstrations is to get (fans’) attention,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said in an interview with The Associated Press. ”These are the people that ignore the fact that people are being shot dead in the street. They’ve found ways to ignore it.”

For weeks, some NFL players, most of them African-American, knelt silently on the sidelines as the national anthem played before kickoff. Their goal: to raise awareness about disparities in policing in communities of color , and about persistent, systemic racism in America.

It was a new approach to an age-old problem.

For generations, black athletes from heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson to tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick have protested in ways large and small to highlight injustice, galvanize support and move the country forward. Often met with backlash from fans uninterested in mixing sports and social issues Jaire Alexander Jersey , many have taken stances that have cost them their careers.

The roots of black athlete activism can be traced to the dawn of black freedom. Even after slavery ended, black Americans were barred from full participation in the public sphere: denied the right to vote, access to mass media, or equal housing and schools.

Because they were blocked from entry in most civic institutions for much of the 20th century, black people found public visibility and expression in other arenas – often cultural ones, like music and sports.

Johnson fought – and beat – white boxers at the height of Jim Crow, when blacks were presumed to be inferior, and dated white women, upending the social norms of the day.

When he finally lost, it would be a generation before another black boxer would be allowed to compete at such a level, and the message had been sent to black athletes that disrupting society came with consequences.

”It’s because of what happens to him that others know they have to toe the line,” said New York University historian Jeffrey Sammons. ”They can’t be seen as defiant or opponents of the system . They know they can’t succeed without living up to expectations and being humble, unassuming and supportive of the established order.”

Then came along Muhammad Ali, who was not one to toe the line.

Ali was the most visible and influential athlete of his generation when he protested the Vietnam War as racially unjust by refusing to be drafted in 1967 Josh Jackson Jersey Elite , a move that cost him his livelihood, derailing his fighting career for years.

Ali’s actions influenced others. Basketball player Abdul-Jabbar boycotted the 1968 Summer Olympics. At the same games, held in Mexico City, American track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos held raised fists covered in black leather gloves as the national anthem played after winning gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race.

Abdul-Jabbar, who at 70 represents a bridge between Ali and Kaepernick, went on to a storied NBA career, but Smith and Carlos returned home to the threat of having their medals taken, and faced difficulty finding coaching jobs.

”It was an international stage that was being used to promote how unified and wonderful the world is, but black Americans at that point were still in a very tough struggle to obtain their rights, both human and political,” Abdul-Jabbar said of the 1968 games. ”The fact that (Smith and Carlos) used an international platform to speak for people who usually don’t have any power to be heard made it all the more significant.”

Carlos said Mexico City was the only place he could’ve made such a statement.

”At that time, for me, there was no other vehicle than the Olympic Games,” he recalled. ”I felt like the humanitarian issues at that time Braden Smith Colts Jersey , as well as the humanitarian issues of today, are more compelling to me than an Olympic medal. I love the Olympics and I love sports, but I love a just cause for humanity even greater.”

It is a sentiment shared by NFL players.

The killing of mostly unarmed black men by mostly white police officers sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, which has again drawn black athletes into the national conversation on race . The sideline protests in the NFL – started in August 2016 by Kaepernick – have been the most prominent display of players’ engagement, though black athletes in baseball and basketball have also had smaller displays of activism.

Because sports are such a prominent aspect of American life, they remain an effective way to bring attention to issues of racial injustice.

”This is our inheritance,” said Howard Bryant, senior writer at ESPN and author of the forthcoming book ”The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism.”

”You’re not allowed to check out,” Bryant said. ”This is going to continue until the United States respects the black brain more than the black body. Then sports can go back to what it was supposed to be – just a game.”

Media – and social media in particular – has helped in recruiting athletes to the cause, explained Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson, whose online civil rights organization has joined with athletes in addressing sy.