Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Options Author
Two years in the past, Jessica Campbell made historical past when she turned the primary girl to work as a full-time assistant coach within the American Hockey League.
Now after two extremely profitable seasons with the Coachella Valley Firebirds, Campbell will break by means of the identical barrier within the Nationwide Hockey League.
Subsequent cease, Seattle.
Campbell, 32, was launched final week as one of many latest additions to the Kraken teaching employees the place she’s going to rejoin Dan Bylsma, the previous Firebirds head coach who was promoted to Seattle himself on Might 28.
Bylsma rapidly turned a fan of Campbell’s as they labored collectively in Coachella Valley. As they constructed the inspiration for the affiliate of an NHL enlargement workforce taking part in in a brand new AHL market, they grew extra accustomed to one another and Bylsma leaned significantly on Campbell and assistant coach Stu Bickel to assist information the Firebirds by means of early rising pains – together with two full months on the highway to start their inaugural season.
“What drew me to Jess [is she is] younger, energetic,” Bylsma informed TheAHL.com in 2023. “I wished coaches that pushed me. I’m making an attempt to assist them alongside, however they’re actually serving to me alongside in my journey.”
By the point Campbell got here to the Firebirds, she had assembled a resume that included 4 seasons as a ahead (together with one as workforce captain) at Cornell College, three years within the Canadian Girls’s Hockey League, worldwide expertise with Hockey Canada, and training stints in Sweden and Germany. She additionally had constructed a status as a superb energy skating and abilities coach.
All of it allowed her to click on rapidly in Coachella Valley.
“She has the respect from the gamers as a result of she has information and talent to supply them,” Bylsma mentioned. “And that was evident actually earlier than she opened her mouth.”
When Campbell met with the Seattle media after the Kraken introduced her hiring, she acknowledged the historic significance, however she most well-liked to concentrate on what’s forward.
“I’m humbled, clearly, to be on this place,” Campbell mentioned of being the primary feminine full-time NHL assistant coach. “However that’s by no means the place my focus is. It’s at all times on the work. It’s on the impression. It’s on the job.”
Campbell’s time within the AHL afforded her loads of alternatives to study. The Firebirds had been launched in a market that was largely new to the game. Constructing the group’s roster from the bottom up, the Kraken supplied Coachella Valley with a burgeoning group of prospects together with a core of veterans with robust personalities. They went 94-32-11-7 over two common seasons, ending second total within the AHL with 103 factors in each years. They solid two lengthy runs to the Calder Cup Finals, successful back-to-back Western Convention championships.
“It’s been quite a lot of enjoyable,” Campbell mentioned. “There’s been success. There’s been hardship. Dan’s been an enormous mentor for me. Dan noticed the potential in me and introduced me into his employees. He gave me a voice and empowered me to be nothing however myself.”
After reaching the second spherical of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2023, the Kraken missed the postseason lower this spring. Campbell, who helped Firebirds gamers to unlock new components of their sport, might be requested to try this in Seattle now as a part of Bylsma’s employees that features fellow assistants Dave Lowry and Bob Woods.
“I’m excited to see how the workforce goes to have the ability to turn into a greater model of the Seattle Kraken. There’s quite a lot of success in retailer for this group.”
Campbell acknowledges that there might be a highlight on her, however she views it as a chance fairly than one thing to worry. Girls have discovered roles in administration, scouting, improvement, officiating, and elsewhere within the sport. Teaching is simply one other frontier.
“If my impression is an effective one,” Campbell mentioned, “it may probably open up doorways and open eyes for others to possibly suppose in another way.
“Although I’m honored to be the primary, I don’t need to be the one.”
TheAHL.com options author Patrick Williams has been on the American Hockey League beat for almost twenty years for shops together with NHL.com, Sportsnet, TSN, The Hockey Information, SiriusXM NHL Community Radio and SLAM! Sports activities, and was most lately the co-host of The Hockey Information On The ‘A’ podcast. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his excellent protection of the league in 2016.
