Color of Hockey: Williams helping to grow sport on, off ice in Jacksonville

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, he profiles Charles Williams, goalie coach and director of community hockey development for Buffalo Sabres affiliate Jacksonville of the ECHL.

Charles Williams would call his professional hockey career a dream come true, except it’s something he never dreamed of as a Black kid growing up in Canton, Michigan.

“My dream was to play college hockey and anything from there would have been the cherry on top,” Williams said. “There ended up being quite a few cherries on top.”

Williams had a stellar career at Buffalo’s Canisius College -- now Canisius University -- where he was one of 10 candidates for the Hobey Baker Award, presented to the NCAA best men’s player, and a finalist for the Mike Richter Award, given to the top goalie in NCAA Division I hockey, in 2017.

The collegiate accolades led to the previously unimagined pro career with seven seasons with Manchester, Indianapolis and Jacksonville of the ECHL and eight games with Hartford, Ontario and Rochester of the American Hockey League.

Williams retired in 2023 after going 111-70-14 in 203 ECHL games with a 2.66 goals-against average, .910 save percentage and 10 shutouts, but he’s far from done with hockey.

The 34-year-old serves double duty on the ice as goalie coach and director of community hockey development with Jacksonville, the Buffalo Sabres ECHL affiliate, tasked with helping to grow the sport in North Florida.

“I’m working with the youth programs that we have here in Jacksonville and our hockey directors on the youth side of things, with our youth coaches, youth goalies as well as the pro goalies, kind of putting it in all one big hockey circle,” Williams said.

“I’m with the (Jacksonville) Icemen on Tuesday, Thursday mornings as well as any morning skate when we have a home game that day, or we have a day trip where we still morning skate. 

"Then in the evenings or in the afternoons is where we like to have those street hockey events where we're in the community. When the team is on the road, I'm able to do different events, like street hockey events, speaking engagements. It definitely adds up, but it's all just geared towards just growing the game.”

Williams expects to be even busier because more kids and adults are eager to try the sport after the United States men’s and women’s teams each won a gold medal at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics and the U.S. sled hockey team won gold in the Paralympic Games for the fifth straight time.

“Yeah, absolutely, but I think it started even before that when you started seeing the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers having success at the NHL level,” Williams said of the Panthers' back-to-back Stanley Cup championships the past two seasons and the Lightning’s Cup titles in 2004, 2020 and 2021. “And to have the Professional Women’s Hockey League growing like it has, and then the Olympics just kind of puts a stamp on that momentum.”

Williams began playing hockey when he was 13 after his family moved about 30 miles west from Detroit to Canton. He became a goalie because he got tired of losing games.

“I started off as a (forward) and my brother I were on the same team, and our goalie was letting in a lot of goals -- we’d lose, like, by 13 or 15, stuff like that,” he told the Color of Hockey in 2017. “I told my brother, ‘If you keep scoring, I’ll try to stop the puck.’ 

"Everyone had to go through a rotation playing goalie and I wanted to volunteer, and it actually worked out great. We started winning and we didn’t want to change it.”

Williams was talented enough to play in the Detroit area’s elite Honeybaked, Little Caesars and Compuware youth hockey programs.

He went on to play for Ferris State University, a Division I program in Big Rapids, Michigan, where he was 5-8-1 with a 3.01 goals-against average, .889 save percentage and one shutout from 2012-16.

Feeling he had unfinished business in the net, Williams transferred to Canisius, and things took off. He went 21-7-5 with a 1.82 GAA, .943 save percentage and six shutouts in 2016-17.

He led the nation in save percentage and shutouts; ranked second in goals against average (minimum 30 games), fifth in saves (1,016) and seventh in shots faced (1,077) on the way to earning Hobey Baker and Richter award finalist honors.

“I think a lot about my time at Ferris State, where I didn't play as much, and how much that really helped me going on to play pro hockey,” Williams said. “Canisius was an amazing season and what they did for my career is unbelievable. 

"But just thinking about the time at Ferris and all those practices where you were working so hard and just putting your head down and sticking with it. ... I wasn't playing but I was still working hard every day, come in like a pro every day with the mindset of, like, ‘I'm going to get better today, I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can.’ I didn't want to take any days off or miss any optional (skates).”

It’s the same approach Williams is taking in trying to spread hockey around Jacksonville and North Florida.

“I just feel like this is exactly where I’m supposed to be, this is home,” he said. “I think it's great to be here at this level here, where we can really introduce a new community to it, and just grow it.”