Seeing a female coach in a male sport is quite rare, but in the National Hockey League, that changed on Oct. 8 when Jessica Campbell, a former Canadian international player, made her debut as the Seattle Krakens new assistant coach, while also making the debut as the first women assistant coach within the NHL.
Campbell had her fair share of success before joining the coaching world. During her time playing at the international level, Campbell won four Nations Cups? in 2014 and was a part of Canada’s silver medal winning side at the Women’s 2015 World Championships.
Campbell has been coaching since 2017, where she started with youth leagues in her home country of Canada, before moving internationally to countries like Sweden and Germany. In 2022, Campbell moved to the American Hockey League, where she joined the Krakens top minor league affiliate – the Coachella Valley Firebirds, to who she would be an assistant coach for the following two seasons.
While the Kraken fell to the Saint Louis Blues in their first game of the season, it was still a historic moment that will go down in the books for everyone in the league.
This comes after the Professional Women’s Hockey League was established in August of 2023, allowing for female hockey players to take their skills to the next level without having to go international to play.
The PWHL consists of six charter franchises, with three teams in the United States and three teams in Canada: Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. These teams play in regular season games to grant themselves one of four spots in a postseason tournament that determines who wins the Walter Cup.
“You saw the dream of the Stanley Cup, not having that feeling when your brothers and dad were talking about it. Now that there’s a women’s league, it changes the perspective of I can lift a trophy and I want win national championships in the sport that I love on the professional level,” junior Lucy Puls said.
This is not only a momentous time for those affiliated with the NHL, but also for those who just play hockey, whether male or female, and for those who dream of being in Campbell’s shoes one day.
Those like Puls, who plays hockey for the Kansas City Storm, has never had a female role model or female presence during the time she has played other than those playing in the Olympics. “Now that there is a professional league and there is a female professional coach it changes the overall perspective” Puls said.
With the formation of the PWHL and the female addition to the NHL coaching staff, it is encouraging to little girls who want to give hockey a try. It is motivating to those who play the sport and allows them to have a future in the sport that doesn’t have to stop after college.
“Now that there is someone to look up to there is a standard that there is a place for them in the sport,” Puls said.
