Color of Hockey: Petrich hopes to climb coaching ladder to Olympics

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.”

Rico Phillips, a retired Flint firefighter who founded the Flint Inner-City Youth Hockey Program said Petrich began playing mostly against boys and quickly excelled in hockey.

“She took off out of the local scene pretty quick,” said Phillips, a 2019 Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award recipient who is director of culture and community for the Ontario Hockey League. “Because there wasn’t that level of talent in hockey here in Flint. She had to go elsewhere.”

Petrich went on to play girls’ hockey for Shattuck-St. Mary’s, where her classmates included Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews and Drew Stafford.

“What a place to be able to say you went to school or are hoping to go to school for what they can provide academically and then athletically,” she said.

She earned a scholarship to Northeastern, where she became one of the first Black women to play for the Huskies. She had 83 points (40 goals, 43 assists) in 131 NCAA Division I games from 2004-08 and was captain her senior year.

“She was just a really naturally gifted forward,” said Northeastern assistant coach Lindsay Berman, who played two seasons with Petrich. “The way that Nikki played, it just was kind of effortless, like at times, it looked like she wasn't trying, but it just came that easy to her.”

Petrich got into coaching as her college playing career was winding down in 2008, when Nick Carpenito asked if she would help him coach Northeastern’s women’s club hockey team.

“My rebuttal was, ‘I don't know, I don't think I could ever get the same feeling coaching as playing, because I'm not in control of the game,’” she said. “Playing, I can control it, have a larger part in the outcome of the game.”

But once Petrich got a coach’s whistle in her hand, she was hooked.

“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, I'm kind of good at this,’” she said.

Carpenito, now associate coach for Northeastern’s Division I women’s team, wasn’t surprised.

“It was a very natural transition for her,” he said. “Because she was so fresh from her playing career, she was able to specifically draw what she had to do as a player. And she played for some super-knowledgeable coaches that was she was able to draw from.”

She began climbing the coaching ladder, serving as a youth coach for the Islanders Hockey Club in Middleton, Massachusetts, for more than 11 years; associate women’s coach at Austin Preparatory School in Reading for almost five years; girls coach at Canton High from August 2022 until last May, and now Lawrence Academy. She also worked as a volunteer for SCORE Boston, an NHL Hockey Is For Everyone affiliate.

“I would love to coach collegiately for a few years and then, absolutely, my end game is to coach in the Olympics,” Petrich said.

Carpenito said he thinks the “sky’s the limit” for Petrich when it comes to coaching.

“You’re going to have go through the muck a little bit before you get to where you want to be,” he said. “But I think if she’s willing to take that leap, she is going to do some incredibly special things in her coaching career.”