TORONTO (AP) — Jessica Campbell stood behind the visitors’ bench watching that night’s opponent in warm-ups.
The Seattle Kraken assistant coach was focused on the Dallas Stars’ line rushes and defensemen pairs when she noticed a young girl in the stands.
“Just so excited,” Campbell recalled of the face looking back through the glass. “I locked eyes with her in that moment … it hit me that I’m looking at her and she can now see what she can become. I never had that.”
The 32-year-old Campbell is the first woman to hold an on-the-bench role as an assistant or associate coach in NHL history after getting hired in July following two seasons with Seattle’s top minor-league affiliate.
“Starting to really get to know the group and the team, them getting to know me,” she said. “The demands of the schedule, the vigorous push through it all, it’s just managing all that.”
It’s also about managing the attention as a trailblazer.
“As I go through these moments, I don’t take it lightly, the path that I’m on and charting,” said Campbell, who spoke with reporters in Montreal and Toronto this week as she marked her first NHL games in Canada. “But I think there’s so much to this schedule, to this job, that I can’t take any moment for granted. I never do.”
Campbell, a native of Rocanville, Saskatchewan, played college hockey at Cornell, professionally in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League and with the national team. She grew up cheering for the Canadiens and wore that iconic red, white and blue jersey — her mother, Monique, taught her how to skate — on frigid outdoor prairie ponds in southeastern Saskatchewan.
It was surreal Tuesday night as she was on the bench at Bell Center as Seattle routed Montreal, 8-2.
“I played one game at the Bell Center at the very end of my career in the CWHL and went to the Habs game right after with my parents,” she said. “It was just a full circle moment where I really felt all the emotions of what this journey has been.”
Campbell has risen through the game at a lightning-quick pace.
After retiring as a player and doing a coaching stint in Sweden, she started work as a power-skating consultant when the pandemic hit. That meant NHL players in British Columbia needed ice time as the league prepared for its restart in the summer of 2020. Those sessions in the Okanagan Valley got her thinking there was a path to the NHL.
“I proved it to myself on my own as they showed up and paid for my services,” Campbell said. “They gave me the permission to believe in this dream because I didn’t see it was possible. They allowed me to see that it was possible.”
Her power-skating reputation subsequently landed her an assistant coaching role with Germany at the 2022 men’s world championship. Seattle then hired Campbell to work alongside Stanley Cup winner Dan Bylsma with the Kraken’s American Hockey League team.
When Bylsma was promoted to Seattle’s top job in May, she packed up and followed a month later.
“They’ve been great, very respectful,” Campbell said of the players’ reception. “I’m potentially more different to them than they are to me … they’re very familiar now with how I operate. I believe I’m a very approachable person and compassionate.”
Her style is shaped by coaches she appreciated as a player — and those she didn’t.
“The power of positivity is real,” Campbell said. “Even the top players, sometimes they don’t even know how good they are. You give affirmations to certain players and they go out and they just get rolling even more. Care about them as human beings, get to know them, how they tick, how they operate.”
Campbell, who won silver for Canada at the 2015 women’s worlds and captained the 2010 under-18 team to gold, said she feels that she belongs at the highest level of hockey.
“Focus on my work and hope that success or that impact’s a good one, and it can only lead to good for others,” she said. “It keeps me grounded and it puts a lot of meaning into the work that I do. I’m part of something a lot bigger than myself.”
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