William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, as part of NHL.com's celebration of Black History Month, he profiles Nikki Petrich, a former Northeastern University forward who’s one of the few women of color coaching girls’ high school hockey in Massachusetts, at Lawrence Academy.
When Nikki Petrich left to play hockey for Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Faribault, Minnesota, her mother told her she could always return to Flint, Michigan, if she ever got homesick.
“Truthfully, I never came back,” Petrich said.
Petrich has been on a hockey journey that hs taken her from Michigan to Minnesota to Massachusetts, where she is believed to be the only Black woman currently coaching a girls’ high school or prep school program.
Petrich is in her first season coaching at Lawrence Academy in bucolic Groton, Massachusetts, about 43 miles from Boston. The 39-year-old former Northeastern University forward and captain is 9-11-0 overall and 3-5-0 in conference play behind the bench in Independent School League competition this season.
She led Canton High School to a 19-3-4 record last season and to the Elite Eight in the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 2 hockey tournament after taking the team to the MIAA final in 2023, losing to 5-2 to Duxbury High School.
“Her teams are always well-prepared, disciplined, play the game hard,” said Mark Lissner, associate registrar for girls/women's hockey in Massachusetts.
Part of that is rooted in a hockey pedigree forged in Flint, where her father, Karl, was a police officer who played for the department team and worked security for the Flint Generals of the old International Hockey League.
“I have just fond memories of always going to Generals games and skating with those guys, you know, no teeth, and crazy hair -- God, it was so much fun,” she said. “And I actually ended up taking skating lessons from some of them and skating with them during their practices.”