Campbell Ready to Make History with Kraken as 1st Woman to Coach in NHL Assistant takes next step on 'phenomenal journey' in season opener against Blues

By Tracey Myers. NHL Staff Writer.

SEATTLE – Jessica Campbell has a tattoo on the back of her right hand of the Finnish word "Ytimessa," which became a mantra while she was assistant coach for the German men's national team in 2021-22.

"It's flow, essentially. Your flow state," said Campbell, who also has a Swedish Crown on the outside of her right hand from her time as a skating coach in Malmo, Sweden, in 2020-21. "These are all my coaching moments."

Campbell doesn't foresee adding another tattoo, but the mark she is making on the hockey world is indelible.

Campbell is the first woman to be a full-time assistant coach in NHL and was to be behind the bench when the Seattle Kraken open their season against the St. Louis Blues at Climate Pledge Arena on Tuesday, October 8, 2024.

"The year ahead is going to be a lot of fun. But to know and to understand that obviously there's still at the forefront the thoughts of other women and other people who have the same aspirations as I do," she told NHL.com. "So, to carry that torch every day and keep my focus on being a coach, but it definitely puts meaning into the work."

Campbell is a member of the NHL Coaches' Association's Female Coaches Program, which supports female coaches with skills development, leadership strategies, communication tactics, networking, and career advancement opportunities. Now in its fifth year, the NHLCA Female Coaches Program has more than 100 women, the largest membership in the program's history. This season, they welcomed 34 new women to the program.

Campbell, 32, was named assistant coach for the Kraken on July 3, joining Dan Bylsma, who was named Seattle coach May 28. Bylsma was coach and Campbell his assistant the past two seasons for Coachella Valley, the Kraken's American Hockey League affiliate.

There's also familiarity with some players the two had in Coachella Valley that are now with the Kraken, including forwards Shane Wright, Tye Kartye and Ryan Winterton.

As she was in the AHL, Campbell is in charge of forwards and the power play in Seattle. In their two seasons in the AHL (2022-24), Bylsma and Campbell helped lead Coachella Valley to second in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference in 2022-23 before winning the division last season. The Firebirds lost in the Calder Cup Final to the Hershey Bears in each season.

The Kraken have been on the forefront of the movement to hire women in hockey. One of their first moves was naming Alexandra Mandrycky as director of hockey administration. She helped bring general manager Ron Francis aboard and, in 2022, she was elevated to assistant general manager. The Kraken added Cammi Granato, a legend in the women's hockey, as the first pro woman scout in the NHL on Sept. 25, 2019. Granato was named assistant GM with the Vancouver Canucks on Feb. 10, 2022.

"We are kind of a unique organization in Seattle. I think our organization is 44 percent females and 23 percent BIPOC individuals working for our organization. But (Campbell) did not get this job because she is female," Kraken general manager Ron Francis told NHL.com at the 2024 NHL Rookie Faceoff in September. "She got this job because she is a very talented coach and we think she'll not only bring the knowledge of a coach, but the ability to work with our players on power skating and skill development. It's an extra voice in the room and an extra tool to help them in that regard."

Before retiring as a player in 2017, Campbell played four seasons at Cornell University (2010-14) and three seasons with the Calgary Inferno of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (2014-17). She won gold with the Canadian women's team in the 2010 IIHF World U18 Championship and 2014 4 Nations Cup, and silver at the 2009 World U18 Championship and the 2015 World Championship and 4 Nations Cup.

Her first big break in coaching came a few years later. Campbell was teaching power skating at the Pursuit of Excellent Hockey Academy in Kelowna, British Columbia, when Peter Elander, a long-time women's hockey coach who led Sweden to a silver medal at the 2006 Torino Olympics, asked her if she wanted to come to Sweden.

After that season, Campbell returned to North America and her budding business, JC Powerskating, where she trained NHL players including Los Angeles Kings defenseman Joel Edmundson, Nashville Predators defenseman Luke Schenn and Carolina Hurricanes forward Tyson Jost. She also worked with forward Natalie Spooner, her former Team Canada teammate and currently of member of the Toronto Sceptres in the PWHL.

The next coaching opportunity soon came calling for Campbell in Germany in 2021-22. She joined Nurnberg of the German Ice Hockey League, starting as a skating and skills coach. In the second half of the regular season, the head coach, Tom Rowe, asked her to look at Nurnberg's special teams.

"He said, 'OK, present it to the guys, you're coming on the bench tonight and you're running the power play,'" she said. "Within minutes of running a skills session I was behind the bench, in practice and coaching."

Campbell was getting ready to leave her hotel room in Las Vegas for the Tri-City USHL Futures Camp in June 2022 when she saw the email. It was from Bylsma, the subject line reading "Coaching Inquiry." She remembers the email saying, "Hi, this is Dan Bylsma. I'm looking to get in touch with you if you'd be interested in a coaching opportunity."

She thought it was spam.

After all, Bylsma was a Stanley Cup-winning coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009 and also coached the Buffalo Sabres.

"I was like, 'I'm going to respond but I don't know (who) I'm responding to or if this person's real,'" Campbell said. "Eventually he called me, so it was pretty surreal."

In his quest for an assistant coach, Bylsma had been talking to Francis, Coachella Valley vice president of hockey operations Troy Bodie and Kraken assistant general manager Jason Botterill.

On July 5, 2022, Coachella Valley hired Campbell, making her the first woman behind the bench as a full-time coach in AHL history. Under her direction, Coachella Valley's power play was ranked 14th (20.3 percent) in the AHL in 2022-23 and 14th again last season (18.4 percent).

As good as Campbell was with the Xs and Os, she was just as good at developing relationships with the players.

It's certainly a day to celebrate. This has been, in Campbell's words, "a phenomenal journey," and she hopes this is just the beginning of a long career in the NHL.

"To be here now and reflect on the last three years, four years of kind of the start of how I got here and just really embarking on my own path, I never really imagined this would maybe come to fruition or the way that it did. But I had a belief that potentially I could do this, and I just kept my focus on it," she said.

Campbell is not the only one making strides in hockey. Former Canadian player Kori Cheverie, the first woman hired to a full-time coaching role on a men's team in U sports (Canada's governing body for university sports) history when she was assistant at Ryerson University from 2016-21, is now coach of the Montreal Victoire in the Professional Women's Hockey League. Kim Weiss, who played hockey at Trinity College from 2007-11, is video coach for the Colorado Eagles, the Colorado Avalanche's AHL affiliate. Former Boston University defenseman Tara Watchorn, who won gold with Canada at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, was named the Terriers women's coach in 2023.

"To be here now and taking it all in and to be doing it with Dan and with a lot of the younger guys, too, that have come up with us in Coachella," Campbell said, "the pieces all fit together, and I think the timing is great."

NHL.com senior director of editorial Shawn P. Roarke and staff writer Derek van Diest contributed to this report.