A long journey prepared Kraken coach Jessica Campbell to make NHL history: ‘It’s monumental’

In the spring of 2020, with the NHL season suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Damon Severson was looking for somewhere to skate in preparation for the league’s return to play in August.

As it happened, a childhood friend had access to ice time. Jessica Campbell, who grew up with Severson in Melville, Sask., was running small group skills sessions for her power skating business in Kelowna, B.C., and Severson started coming out with a few teammates and friends.

“The first time we got off the ice after one of her sessions, the boys were like, ‘That was a really good skate. She knows what she’s doing,’” said Severson, who is now a defenseman for the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Campbell’s business, JC Power Skating, was still fairly new — launched in 2019, a few years after she officially retired from her international playing career with Team Canada — but it took off that spring. Her skills sessions were high-tempo, with drills that simulated real game-like situations and pace. Word spread, and soon enough, the group of NHL players showing up to those sessions started to grow. Everyone from Luke Schenn and Tyson Jost, to Brent Seabrook and Shea Weber took part.

Until that point in her career, Campbell had mostly thought about becoming an NHL skate coach. She had never envisioned herself as an NHL coach. But as more NHL players started coming to her skates that spring, and she worked more closely with Seabrook — who was working to get back to playing after multiple surgeries in 2019-20 — the vision started to take shape.

“It definitely catapulted me into this space,” she said. “Brent and the guys in Kelowna, they showed up for me and almost gave me permission to believe in this dream.”

Propelled by that experience in Kelowna, Campbell made stops in the Swedish Hockey League as a skating coach and in Germany with the Nürnberg Ice Tigers. In May 2022, she became the first woman to coach at the men’s world championships, working as an assistant coach for the German national team. Two months later, she became the first woman to coach in the AHL with the Coachella Valley Firebirds, the minor-league affiliate of the Seattle Kraken.

Now Campbell is on the verge of more history. When the Kraken make their regular season debut on Tuesday against the St. Louis Blues, she will be behind the bench as an assistant coach. While women have held coaching positions in the NBA, MLB and NFL for years, no woman has ever coached full-time in the NHL — until now.

For Campbell, it will be the culmination of a long bet-on-herself journey that has taken her thousands of miles from the Okanagan, to Europe, the desert and the Pacific Northwest. Over the years, Campbell has established herself as a coach with a unique skill set, a wealth of knowledge and the ability to help players reach another level of their game.

“We’re going to see a woman behind the bench for the first time in the National Hockey League and it’s monumental,” Dan Bylsma, the new Seattle Kraken head coach, told The Athletic. “But the (goal) was to get the best coach — and it happened to be Jessica Campbell.”

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Campbell first drew Bylsma’s attention when he saw her on the bench at the 2022 men’s world championships.

He was looking for up-and-coming young coaches to add to his bench for the startup Coachella Valley Firebirds. Campbell was a new face in the small world of coaching, and she jumped onto the shortlist.

She had been hired to coach at the tournament by coach Toni Söderholm, who was similarly looking for a fresh voice to add to the bench after a disappointing 2022 Olympics for the German national team. Söderholm had seen Campbell’s work in Nürnberg — how she helped fix their lifeless power play — and was impressed by her penalty kill presentation during the interview process.

Campbell joined the German team as an assistant coach, working on the penalty kill and leading skill sessions with players, including the Ottawa Senators’ Tim Stützle and Detroit Red Wings’ Moritz Seider.

“She will make every player better that is willing to put the time in,” said Tom Rowe, the former NHL executive who worked with Campbell in Nürnberg and the German national team.

Rowe played and coached with Kraken general manager Ron Francis; he also knows Bylsma well. When they came calling, Rowe made his recommendation: Hire Jessica Campbell.

As Bylsma continued to do his research on Campbell, he heard about her work with NHL players during the COVID-19 stoppage and her playing and skills development background, and it “quickly became evident that she was the best coach for the situation that we were going to have in CV,” he said.

A month after the tournament, Campbell was in Las Vegas working a development camp for the USHL’s Tri-City Storm when she got a submission through the JC Power Skating online contact form.

The message was from Bylsma, who was hoping to talk to her about a potential coaching opportunity. Campbell said she initially wondered if it was spam – Bylsma won a Stanley Cup and 320 games as an NHL coach, so surely he could get a phone number — but she replied anyway, just in case the opportunity was real.

A month later, Campbell officially joined his staff. She was tasked with helping develop the next generation of Kraken players, and for two years in Coachella Valley, Bylsma saw firsthand what would make Campbell a good NHL coach.

She ran the Firebirds’ power play and focused on player development with the team’s forward group that included first-round pick Shane Wright, Ryker Evans and Tye Kartye, an undrafted free agent who, in Campbell’s first season, was named AHL Rookie of the Year and earned a call-up to Seattle.

“Tye did the work on his own, that’s all on Tye, but it’s with Jess’ guidance,” Bylsma said during a press conference in June. “She’s demonstrated that over the last few years and it makes me eager for her to do it at the NHL level.”

Campbell is known as an excellent communicator and works to understand each player as a person and how they want to be coached. Some players need an extra pat on the back, or extra reps, or a tough love approach. And Campbell is in tune with who needs what and takes pride in putting in the work with them.

If players want to do extra video work, she is game. If they want to stay on the ice after practice, she is there with them. Her background as a skills coach means she can work with players on their skating or to improve various aspects of their game. She also sees the game well from a micro level — the little details that happen in a sequence in the offensive zone, or the power play, and even down to a players’ skating stride. Campbell watches a ton of video and can isolate those moments and show players, if they make a little adjustment here, it could lead to this.

“She has something to provide to players, and they immediately recognize what she has to offer to them and their careers and their growth and development,” Bylsma said. “She’s all-in with them and you immediately get that sense and feel from her when she’s coaching you.”

That all-in attitude is something that has translated from her playing days into coaching. Campbell played at Cornell and spent three seasons in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League; she also captained Canada’s U18 team to a gold medal at world championships and represented Team Canada at women’s worlds. Campbell was a relentless power forward who played the game with speed and tenacity – Canada and PWHL Toronto forward Blayre Turnbull said Campbell is the fastest skater she’s ever played with. She embraced whatever role she was given as a player and Campbell said she is no different as a coach.

“When you have a coach that has passion for the game and passion for teaching and a passion for helping all of their players and athletes get better, I find that’s when you’re able to make a lot of strides and move forward in your game,” said Turnbull, who also trained with Campbell in Kelowna. “Because you have someone that believes in you and someone that can show you things that you might not have thought you could add to your game.”

In two years with Campbell on the bench, no team in the AHL scored more goals than the Firebirds (509), while the power play operated around 20 percent. The team went to the Calder Cup Finals in back-to-back seasons, losing to the Hershey Bears both times. During the 2023-24 run to the finals, Bylsma was named the head coach of the Kraken, replacing Dave Hakstol.

According to Bylsma, Campbell was in the conversation to join the NHL bench, should there be changes to the assistants, from the start. He began asking Campbell more about her aspirations to coach in the NHL, if she would be ready to take on a first of that magnitude, and her ideas about the Kraken’s power play. Francis even sat in on some of Campbell’s power play meetings to get a sense of how she was doing. The takeaway?

“She’s got a real good knowledge of the game,” he said after Campbell was hired by the Kraken.

When the Firebirds season ended on June 24 — a 5-4 overtime loss in Game 6 of the Finals — the staff flew to Las Vegas for the 2024 NHL Draft, then went right to Seattle to run development camp. When they got to Seattle, Bylsma and his wife, Mary Beth, took Campbell out for dinner. At the end of the meal, Mary Beth excused herself. “Dan has to talk to you now,” she said.

Bylsma cut right to the chase, asking Campbell: “Do you want to coach in the NHL?”

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Campbell doesn’t take the magnitude of becoming the first woman to coach in the NHL lightly, but in the weeks leading up to Seattle’s season opener, the milestone wasn’t her primary focus.

“I have to continue to do what I’ve always done, and that’s to do my job to the best of my ability,” she said. “I wake up every day, I put my shoes on, and my skates on, and my track suit in the same way as my counterparts.”

The ultimate goal is to be a good coach and help the Kraken succeed. And if she can do that, Campbell is hopeful it will have a positive impact on the future of women coaching in the NHL. “It’s about keeping my mind fixed on the job … And hopefully only good will come of it,” she said.

There’s growing infrastructure in place to ensure their future doesn’t land completely on Campbell’s shoulders. In 2020, the NHL Coaches Association launched a female coaches program to help support the development of women who coach hockey through networking opportunities, coaching clinics and visibility – to normalize the idea that women can coach men.

“I envision a world where it’s not newsworthy that Jess is hired because she’s a woman,” said Lindsay Pennal, the executive director of the NHL Coaches’ Association. “It’s just newsworthy because a team hired a new coach, period.”

Several members of the program have had opportunities to guest coach at NHL camps or be on the bench for preseason games.  Last season, Kori Cheverie — the first woman to coach men’s Canadian university hockey and is now the head coach of the PWHL’s Montreal Victoire — was a guest coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins and became the first female coach on the bench in an NHL preseason game. Kim Weiss — the first woman to coach NCAA Division III men’s hockey — was a guest coach for the Colorado Avalanche. This season, Christine Bumstead — an assistant coach with the University of Saskatchewan women’s hockey team and a development coach with the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades — was on the bench for a Florida Panthers preseason game.

Hockey has lagged behind other professional sports when it comes to diversity throughout organizations, and not just when it comes to gender. In recent years more women have joined NHL front offices, led by assistant general managers Kate Madigan (New Jersey), Alexandra Mandrycky (Seattle), Hayley Wickenheiser (Toronto) and Émilie Castonguay and Cammi Granato in Vancouver. The NHL still has a long way to go when it comes to women on the bench, but Campbell’s resume shows there is a path for women who aspire to coach at the men’s pro level.

“I’ve always tried to take my experiences and that work and use it as confidence and as a way to reassure myself what I’m capable of,” Campbell said. “I think that the beauty in getting good experiences in life is using them as you continue on.”

Her experience running drills back in Kelowna paid off during her first camp with the Kraken in 2022-23. Justin Schultz was at those skates, and a member of the Kraken for the last two seasons. Goalie Philipp Grubauer was on the German national team when Campbell was working with the team. Bylsma said it was clear that when Campbell stepped on the ice at camp, she’d already earned the players’ respect.

“She had already proven what kind of coach she was capable of being,” he said.

With the Kraken, Campbell’s role will be similar to her position in Coachella — working with the forwards and on the power play, this time with assistant coach Bob Woods. On Tuesday, the franchise is beginning its fourth season and looking to get back on track after last season’s 19-point drop from 2022-23. The team made some big swings in free agency — signing Brandon Montour and Chandler Stephenson — but will also rely on internal improvement from players, particularly younger players like Evans, Wright, Kartye and Matty Beniers, and the overall offense, which took a step back last year. The hope is Campbell can contribute to maximizing the talent on the roster the same way she did in Coachella.

“I’m just trying to continue to have a strong impact on every player that I’ve got the opportunity to work with and not take that lightly,” Campbell said. “I’m here and now I’m just going to own the moment and enjoy the opportunity to be doing what I love on the biggest stage in the world.”

— The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline contributed to this report.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photo: Christopher Mast / NHLI via Getty Images)