The Seattle Kraken could have a bench spot to fill this summer. Assistant coach Jessica Campbell is set to be a free agent for the first time since being promoted to the NHL in 2024. She is expected to take the chance to explore other options around the league, per a press release from Kraken general manager Jason Botterill. Botterill said:
Jessica has been an important member of our coaching staff for the past four years, demonstrating deep knowledge and a unique ability to connect with, and develop, players.
While this could likely result in Campbell moving on from the Pacific Northwest, it doesn’t appear Seattle has closed the door to bringing Campbell back next season, per ESPN’s Emily Kaplan. Kaplan adds that Campbell has generated interest from across the NHL.
Campbell became the first woman to fill a full-time, assistant coach role in the NHL. She accomplished the same feat in the AHL when she joined Dan Bylsma‘s staff on the Coachella Valley Firebirds in 2022. Campbell already had an extensive hockey resume at the time, with one World Championship silver medal, three NCAA conference championships, and one season as an assistant coach for the DEL’s Nurnberg Ice Tigers, part of Germany’s top pro league, under her belt. Coachella Valley raced to the Calder Cup Finals in both seasons under Bylsma and Campbell’s reign, though they lost to the Hershey Bears both times.
A pair of appearances in the championship series was still enough to earn Bylsma and Campbell a promotion to the NHL. It was a reunion for Bylsma, who spent seven seasons as an NHL head coach between 2009 and 2017. Unfortunately, that reunion quickly turned sour, with Bylsma being dismissed after leading Seattle to a 35-41-6 record and bottom-12 finish in both goals-scored and goals-against in the 2024-25 season. The Kraken opted to retain Campbell despite firing their top coach, a bode of confidence in the former professional skills coach.
Now one season later, the Kraken are continuing to speak praise towards Campbell’s ability to lead at the top level. She could be an intriguing candidate for teams looking to bring a bit more finesse to their lineup. The Columbus Blue Jackets recently fired two assistant coaches, opening the door for the NHL’s oldest head coach, Rick Bowness, to hire his own bench staff. The New York Islanders also recently parted with head coach Patrick Roy, in favor of free agent Peter DeBoer. Both clubs could use a jolt of offense after impressive seasons that still fell short of the postseason. Campbell, once a dynamic and intelligent playmaker at Cornell University and for Sweden’s SDHL Malmo Redhawks, could bring that jolt with an extra focus on developing some of the club’s burgeoning stars.
Wilf, rumor is the Leafs will sign Jessica Campbell to a coaching role after the hire Ron Francis as GM.
I’d love to know if they thought she was truly the best option when they hired her.
of course not
Are you really suggesting there are zero women capable of being one of the 100 assistant coaches in the NHL?
@seacaptain77 You’re trying to imply that a female can run a bunch of young and physically apt men?
zero
If she knows what she’s talking about, why wouldn’t they listen to her?
Men dont like being bossed around by women in general it stems from physiological differences between human males and human females and usually leads to poor outcomes.
She’s also a pretty young female at 33 while SEA has plenty of players in their 30
Only if they’re cementheads like a handful of the posters here convinced that just because their own brains are in their penises, having a penis is a prerequisite to intelligent thought.
Frigging tough, cupcake. They don’t get paid to like being bossed around by their coaches. If they can’t handle being told what to do by their bosses they can find another line of work.
If you guys dont understand how biology and organizations work thats on you and not on me. @Nhl Trang’s a tough customer i see. Is he on USAID’s payroll?
Spoiler: women dont like being bossed around by other women either. Now you can take it out on women for them not fitting into your pink glasses rainbow worldview. But you wont do it cuz u sissy
This isn’t just an ignorantly sexist take, but an insult to the professionalism of NHL players.
Get real…what are you, a 12 year old girl?
LOL
One last thing left to do is to put a female in the White House’s big chair. Life’s gonna be milk and honey after that
We will never know. Like most people, I had never heard of her when she was hired. I will admit, that the first thing that went through my mind was “did she get the job because they wanted to hire a woman, or did they really think she was the best fit”. The problem is, that’s what most will think when any woman gets hired, whether she is qualified or not. The number of people who have any idea whether she is a good coach or not is really, really small. The number of people will to pass judgement is much, much larger. Feel free to post your thoughts. But please, make sure they are actual thoughts with some justification.
Damn if you do, damn if you don’t. How much of success or failure of SEA on her is hard to tell. I don’t think SEA has graduated AHL talent to NHL very well even with her and the HC graduating from CV. Other assistant coaches like Muller in WAS seemed to be easier to identify specific faults as the PP under his command really stunk and blaming Muller seems easiest.
All of the usual conversations aside – wasn’t she a required piece of the staff for any new hire last year? That surely impacted who would interview and want the job, since everyone usually wants to hire their own staff, right? How could they have that kind of commitment to her this time last year, without knowing she had a similar commitment to them?
Man, woman, it doesn’t matter – this is a wild outcome for Seattle. They truly believed in her to the degree that it impacted basically everything they did, and she’s leaving as soon as she’s contractually allowed to. That’s a real, real bad look for the Kraken.
I think you’re over thinking things. They kept Campbell likely because it would have looked really bad (1st woman hire and then immediately fired). If Campbell wanted to leave last year, she surely could have made it happen.
In retrospect, she was a major bridge between the Kraken and Torrent, and the Kraken really went above and beyond to help the PWHL out. Campbell did quite a bit of that work. So my bet was she partly kept on for those reasons.
Honestly, I thought she was gonna end up as the head coach for the torrent and that’s why she wasn’t let go with Bylsma. With new expansion teams in the PWHL this year, she might get a head coach chance there
Where she belongs, and NOT the NHL.
@ kael: because, of course, you’re firmly convinced that a penis is necessary to be in an NHL building.
One of the best skating coaches in the world . Just that alone would be a huge advantage for any team looking to draft players with value picks that have skating issues .
What’s that based on? Serious question–not being a smart-ass.
ha ha ha
If I had a dime for every partnership I’ve been in where the other party wanted to “explore options” and then chose me, I’d have.. one dime.
According to the responsibilities she had as an assistant, it says “During her tenure, she was primarily responsible for working with the forwards and managing the team’s power play”. If that’s the case, the Kraken were in the botton 3rd in GPG and PP%. Make of that what you will.
No sensible team in the NHL would hire her unless they want a “look at me” moment…..we hired a woman, look at us!
If a team is actually serious about winning instead, they would stay away.
Spoken by someone who knows nothing about Campbell, of course.
Spoken by someone who knows nothing about anything, of course
hakstol gets them into the playoffs year two .. despite horrible goaltending provided by francis.. who does nothing to address the hole in goal .. hakstol fired year three and they’ve been worse ever since
Kraken goaltending wasn’t bad this year and the goalies Francis drafted are doing great in Coachella Valley… Kraken problem is they can’t score.
Hakstol didnt have a vagina, see?
Stuart Skinner might be a perfect fit in Seattle.
No, I don’t see. What kind of pervert makes a crack like that?
I think she’s an upgrade over anyone the LA Kings currently have.