Minnesota Frost rookie Dominique Petrie grew up in California, dreaming of a chance like this

Dominique Petrie sat in Los Angeles traffic, fuming, next to her older brother, Guy.

He was home on break from the University of Utah, and the pair were back to their normal Southern California routine: commute an hour to a hockey rink. Battle relentlessly on the ice — chippy, sometimes frustrated with the sibling rivalry. Drive home slowly, quietly stewing.

Regardless, the Petries were glad it wasn’t longer, not the six-hour drive from the Bay Area they used to make when they lived up north.

That routine was grueling. Leave on Friday, play high-level hockey in Los Angeles over the weekend, be back for school on Monday.

“It was incredible of [my parents] to do it. I still don’t know how they did it,” Dominique Petrie said. “It takes a village to raise a hockey player.”

It’s a hockey desert foreign to most Minnesotans, but it’s the path Petrie took to the Minnesota Frost. She’s one of only three PWHL players raised in California, alongside Frost teammate Brooke Bryant.

But Petrie looks right at home.

A rookie from Hermosa Beach, she’s the PWHL’s only player to have scored in each of her team’s first three games this season. She’s a welcome addition — defensively, too — for a Frost team (2-0-1) that continues its PWHL title defense Thursday against Ottawa.

“Doms,” as the team calls her, was a fifth-round draft pick who played at Harvard, then Clarkson as a graduate transfer. She bounced back from an ACL tear and broken tibia in 2022 to help Clarkson to the Frozen Four last season.

“It usually takes two years [to recover fully from an ACL surgery],” Frost coach Ken Klee said. “We liked the physical part of her game, that she could move, but we knew she was only going to get better.”

Her early season success in St. Paul might be an olive branch to Gophers fans who remember Petrie as the player who scored both the regulation equalizer and overtime game-winner to knock Minnesota out of the Elite Eight in March. Both goals sneaked past Frost teammate Lucy Morgan, reserve goalie, no less.

But to Petrie, the winning goal was an act of mercy. The game stretched into four overtimes and took 5 ½ hours to finish.

“A lot of us were blacked out,” said Petrie. “We don’t really know how we were moving by the end of it.”

Still, the slugfest was shorter than the state-spanning drives she and Bryant used to make.

Both grew up playing with boys, and even then, those teams were sparse. On weekends, Bryant would drive south from Linden to find one of the few girls clubs in California, the Anaheim Lady Ducks.

“My freshman year [at Minnesota State Mankato], my teammates were talking about their high school teams, and how big it is here,” said Bryant. “We didn’t even have a high school team at all.”

Training with boys teams introduced them to hitting early, handy in the highly physical PWHL. The league allows checking, despite its ban at the NCAA and international levels.

“I had to learn to embrace physicality and use it,” Petrie said. “I was usually the one that was getting in there, throwing the fights and defending my teammates.”

She got a taste of that early. A family friend gave the Petries tickets to watch the San Jose Sharks, right up against the glass. They watched Mike Ricci drop his gloves and fight, inches away.

Her brother was in love with the sport, and Petrie was just “the annoying little sister that had to follow in his footsteps,” she said, until eventually, she was captaining Team USA at the IIHF U18 World Championships.

Bryant, meanwhile, started in roller hockey, the more sunshine-friendly version of the sport.

The other option for Californian hockey players was looking for prep schools. Montreal defender and U.S. Olympian Cayla Barnes played hockey in New Hampshire after growing up in Eastvale, Calif., and playing for the Lady Ducks.

This season, the PWHL will play nine neutral-site games, hoping to expand its footprint in cities without teams. The Frost will play in Denver, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C.

Seattle will host the league’s only West Coast game. Petrie hopes California’s growth eventually earns it a look. During her COVID-limited season at Harvard, she coached at the LA Lions, the only all-girls hockey club in Los Angeles. The club didn’t exist when she was growing up, but they reached USA nationals that year.

“Hopefully over time, Cali and L.A. will be able to get [an exhibition game],” Petrie said. “And the fans will be able to show up and show out, and show how hockey is a big sport out there as well.”