Kraken Hires First Female NHL Assistant Coach – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Jessica Campbell becomes the first woman to sit on the bench of an NHL franchise after the Seattle Kraken hired her as an assistant coach on Wednesday.

Campbell has spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach for Seattle’s AHL affiliate in the Coachella Valley, working alongside head coach Dan Bylsma, who was hired in late May to take over the Kraken’s head job. There were immediate questions about whether Campbell would make the move to Seattle with Bylsma.

She will do so by breaking another barrier for women in hockey. Emily Engel-Natzke was hired by the Washington Capitals in 2022 as a video coach, becoming the first woman to hold a full-time assistant role in the league.

Now there will be a woman sitting on the bench.

Campbell was a decorated player in the NCAA, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and the Canadian women’s national team, where she won silver at the 2015 World Championships.

With the exception of a brief stint with the Malmo Redhawks in Sweden in 2019-20, she hung up her skates in 2017 and became a valued skating coach when she joined Coachella Valley in 2022. She also served as an assistant coach for Germany at the 2022 IIHF World Championships.

The 32-year-old native of Rocanville, Saskatchewan, was the first full-time female assistant coach in the AHL when she was hired by the Coachella Valley before the start of the inaugural season. She also had a one-game stint as an assistant on the Kraken bench for a preseason game against Calgary last September.

But having a woman on the bench as a coach is one area where the NHL lags behind the NBA and NFL.

The NHL Coaches Association launched a Female Coaches Development Program in 2021 with the goal of expanding the pool of available candidates.

Even before joining the league in 2021, the Kraken have been at the forefront of providing opportunities for women in hockey operations. Current assistant general manager Alexandra Mandrycky was one of the franchise’s first front-office hires as director of hockey administration in 2018 and was part of the group that led the general manager search that culminated in the hiring of Ron Francis.

Namita Nandakumar was hired in 2020 and is a senior analyst in the hockey department.

Seattle also hired Hall of Famer Cammi Granato as a pro scout in 2019, a role she held before joining the Vancouver Canucks as assistant GM in 2022.

Along with Campbell, the Kraken filled another coaching staff spot by hiring Bob Woods as one of Bylsma’s assistants. Woods had been an assistant at Minnesota since 2017 but was fired when Dean Evason was fired as head coach early last season.

AP Hockey reporter Stephen Whyno contributed.