Campbell ready to make history with Kraken as 1st woman to coach in NHL

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 will be behind the bench when the Seattle Kraken open their season against the St. Louis Blues at Climate Pledge Arena on Tuesday (4:30 p.m. ET, ESPN, ESPN+, SN360, TVAS).

“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.

Bylsma said Campbell’s coaching benefitted not only the Firebirds, but him as well.

“Two years ago, she was a young coach. She had to grow and improve as a coach and I think our relationship has been that,” Bylsma said. “I probably challenged her a few times to do things differently or think about things differently. But at the same time, she’s also, knowingly or not, challenged me as a coach to make sure I’m the coach I want to be.

“So, getting the opportunity in the NHL is because I believe in the skill and the attributes she brings to the individual players and that she can give them to them and help them become better in their own spot, in their own personal way and the team way.”

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.”

Kraken forward Matty Beniers said Campbell has fit in great from the start.

“I think she’s just another coach, someone who worked really hard to get to where they were,” he said. “Guys in Coachella all raved about her and said she was awesome; their power play was really good. They all had great things to say about her and I’m sure the organization and people hiring her went through the process and saw her qualifications. She’s lived up to those expectations so far and when you come to the rink, she’s just another coach.”

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.

“He knew I wanted to be, at the time, a skating coach at this level and skills coach at this level,” she said. “So he presented me with a chance to come into Malmo and I was working with the junior team and then got to support the pro team as well for a little bit.”

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.

“I felt like she was ahead of the game with all these skating techniques to really disguise your skating, whether it’s jab turns, or gap steps into shots,” Spooner said. “We tried to do what she could do. It was a challenge at first, but she was also able to teach it so well I was able to pick it up by the end of summer and became a much better skater. I could just disguise a lot of my moves within my skating, which was really nice.”

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 called it her “pinch-me moment, almost an epiphany.”

“I realized, my same approach to how I was teaching skating and skills I was now taking behind the bench and tactics and just trying to connect the pieces and break it down in the same way for the guys. Now at the pro level, they could connect the dots and deliver. So I’m like, ‘This is a lot of fun. I can do this live.’ It helped not just make a difference in their game but also for the team to have success and it completely flipped a switch for me. That I wanted to be behind the bench and involved in the micro level of the tactical side, not just development.”