With the hire by the Seattle Kraken, the NHL becomes the last of the four major North American professional leagues to feature a full-time female coach.
Kyle Cantlon
·Writer
Thu, October 10, 2024
Seattle Kraken coach Jessica Campbell busted through the NHL's glass ceiling on Tuesday night. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
It wasn't your ordinary NHL opening night. This one was big.
Seattle may have lost its home opener to the St. Louis Blues as the league kicked off a new campaign on Tuesday, but a massive moment for hockey culture was created in the process with Jessica Campbell making her debut behind the Kraken bench — becoming the first full-time female coach to work in the NHL.
The league is the last out of the four major North American professional sports league to feature a full-time female coach, but the saying "better late than never" has never rang more true.
Following the historic night for the Kraken's assistant coach, Campbell played the "business as usual" card as professional coaches do, but the significance of the moment was far from lost from her as she chatted with media following the game.
“For me, it's just a normal day in terms of my work, in terms of my routine, in terms of all of those pieces,” Campbell said.
“But I think the moment leading up to the game and stepping on the bench … I'm really going to try to honour what it is, because I know, and I definitely understand that the magnitude and the importance of this moment is really important for our game,” she added, via NHL.com.
Despite the expected outpouring of negativity from a small minority of trolls and keyboard warriors, Campbell's history-making night is being celebrated by the vast majority of fans. They took to social media to celebrate Campbell's massive accomplishment in a sport that's proven extremely difficult for women coaches and executives to get their foot in the door — let alone kick through it.
Fans were in their feelings after Campbell's debut behind the bench, but the way Seattle's players talked about her after the game is maybe the most telling sign of the impact Campbell will make on the game and on the careers of those who actually suit up to go to battle every night in the best hockey league on Earth.
"It’s something that we’ve all been proud to be a part of," Seattle defenseman Vince Dunn told a gaggle of media following Tuesday's game. "It certainly makes a statement around the world for all women, so it’s a special moment for her tonight. It sucks we couldn’t get the win for her."
Goaltender Joey Daccord, meanwhile, has spent plenty of time under the guidance Campbell and has witnessed first hand the skills and intangibles she possesses that make her such a strong coach and mentor.
“I’ve seen her evolve as a coach,” Daccord said. “My first year with her (with AHL affiliate Coachella Valley) was also her first year, and I think at the beginning, she felt it out a little bit and was a little bit more patient ... trying to figure out the lay of the land and how everything worked.
"Now she's much more assertive, and she's really smart and I think the biggest thing is that she and Dan are just on such the same page that it really allows them to be cohesive in their plan and their strategy and execute the plans that they have for our team."
It's certainly a major move out of the stone age for the NHL and the women's coaching ranks, but it's been a long time coming for a league that often lags behind its North American sports counterparts like the NFL, NBA and MLB, in diverse hiring practices.
Becky Hammon was the first woman to serve as an acting head coach in the NBA in 2020 after being hired as a full-time assistant by the San Antonio Spurs in 2014. There are currently six active female assistant coaches in the NBA.
At the start of the 2024 NFL season, full-time coaching positions were held by 15 women across the league. Major League Baseball teams, meanwhile, employ 43 full-time women coaches across the major and minor leagues after Alyssa Nakken became the first woman to coach on the field in an MLB game for the San Francisco Giants early in the 2022 season.
Though it came a significant time after the other major leagues in North America gave a woman coach a chance, it was bound to happen eventually in the NHL and — based on her extensive success as both a coach and player — there may be nobody better suited than Campbell to break the mold.
As a player, Campbell starred at Cornell University, where she was a team captain and tallied over 100 career points in NCAA Division 1 hockey. After turning pro, she spent three campaigns with the CWHL's Calgary Inferno before playing professionally oversees in Sweden for a couple of seasons.
When she turned her focus to coaching, things really took off. After launching her power-skating school in 2019, Campbell got her big break during COVID when the NHL suspended its season — leaving many players looking for somewhere to skate and stay in shape during the league's hiatus. That's when, according to the Athletic, childhood friend and NHL star Damon Severson reached out wanting to train with her. Soon, dozens of NHLers followed Severson to Kelowna, British Columbia to skate under Campbell's watch.
From there, Campbell was hired to be an assistant coach of the Coachella Valley Firebirds — the minor-league affiliate of the Kraken — before Seattle's newly hired coach Dan Bylsma brought her with him to the big club for the 2024-25 season.
Despite her track record and impressive background, a handful of internet trolls still showed up to try and mar Tuesday's momentus occasion — much to the chagrin of her droves of supporters who flocked to social media to defend the hockey trailblazer.
None of that noise seems to matter to Campbell, though, who is motivated by a force much stronger than internet hate and negativity.
"It fuels me every day just knowing that I’m a part of something way bigger than myself and my job and my coaching," Campbell said to NHL.com. "By doing this, by showing up every day, by keeping my head in the right space, I know that only good can come of it."
"Hopefully, somebody else will have a door held open for them versus them having to push it open and find ways to unlock it," she added.
The hockey world should be thrilled that Campbell is holding the key.
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