Bylsma, 53, last coached in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres, where he was fired in 2017 after two seasons. Previously, Bylsma guided the Pittsburgh Penguins to the playoffs each of his five seasons at the helm, winning the Stanley Cup in his freshman season of 2008-09.
More recently, Byslma was the inaugural head coach for the Coachella Valley Firebirds, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Kraken. The Firebirds advanced to the Calder Cup Finals each of their first two seasons, where one of Bylsma’s top assistants was 32-year-old Jessica Campbell.
Campbell will join Bylsma on the bench when the Kraken open up the 2024-25 NHL preseason on September 22 against the Calgary Flames as one of his assistant coaches this season.
The Seattle Kraken have made no indication they plan on stopping being a franchise full of league firsts in very short order. The Kraken were the first team to have a split jumbotron inside an NHL arena, with essentially half over the goals (or baskets when basketball will be played), improving sight lines for fans throughout Climate Pledge Arena. The Kraken also rebuilt the old KeyArena, implementing a system that recycles the rain water from the roof into the ice surface.
In the spring of 2023, the Kraken became the fastest team in the NHL’s post-expansion era (1967-present) to win a playoff series in their first appearance. That victory came against the Colorado Avalanche, marking the first time an expansion team beat a defending Stanley Cup champion in their first ever playoff series.
Everett Fitzhugh became the first full-time African-American play-by-play announcer in league history, during the inaugural season, a position he previously held with the East Coast Hockey League’s (ECHL) Cincinnati Cyclones.
Now enter Campbell, a former standout at Cornell University from 2010-14. The Big Red reached the NCAA Women’s Frozen Four in Campbell’s freshman season, losing 4-1 to Boston University in the semifinals. The National Championship was eventually won by the Wisconsin Badgers, who sported future US Olympic Team standouts Meghan Duggan and Hillary Knight as co-Most Outstanding Players.
Campbell spent three seasons with the Calgary Inferno of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, winning the Clarkson Cup in 2016, where she scored two goals in the championship game victory over the Canadiennes de Montreal. One of her teammates in Calgary was 2019 Hockey Hall of Fame and IIHF Hall of Fame player Hayley Wickenheiser, who is the current Assistant General Manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 63 career CWHL games, Campbell tallied 21 goals and 29 assists (50 points).
Becoming the first rookie to earn the distinction of being a team captain at the CWHL All Star Game (2014), Campbell also had a goal in the 2015 event.
Despite the CWHL folding in 2019, Campbell founded JC Power Skating in 2017, where some of her clients included current NHL players Tyson Jost (Carolina Hurricanes), 2019 Stanley Cup Champion Joel Edmunson (currently with the Los Angeles Kings), and Natalie Spooner (currently with the Professional Women’s Hockey League franchise in Toronto).
A member of several women’s National Teams, Campbell has bookshelves lined with medals. She won silver as a member of the 2009 Under-18 Team Canada squad, then won gold a year later. Playing with Team Canada, she won gold at the 2014 Four Nations Cup, then silver in 2015. Lastly, she won silver with Team Sweden at the 2015 World Championships.
Her national team resume also includes being the first woman to be an assistant coach, being on Toni Soderholm’s staff that advanced to the quarterfinals of the 2022 IIHF World Championships.
Campbell’s playing career concluded in 2020, after spending one year with the Malmo Redhawks in Damettan (now NDHL) in Sweden. Damettan is the second-highest tiered professional league in Sweden, only to the Swedish Women’s Hockey League (SDHL).
Anyone who feels that Campbell does not have the acumen to stand on an NHL bench, despite being one of the smartest hockey minds around, ask some of the players in Coachella how she aided their development, or how many of them will suit up for Seattle at some point this season. Under Bylsma in Coachella Valley, Campbell was the power play and forwards coach, where the Firebirds were 14th in the AHL at 18.4-percent. The Firebirds averaged 3.50 goals per game last season, which was tops in the AHL, and averaged nearly two more shots (34.61) per game than the second-place Colorado Eagles (32.65). Right winger Kole Lind finished sixth in overall scoring with 65 points, and could crack the Opening Night roster when the regular season opens October 8 at home against my St. Louis Blues.
A game that will be nationally televised, mind you.
Anyone else want to throw out an excuse why Campbell has not earned her shot at the highest level of hockey there is? Or how she will be the most sought-after interview when the PWHL expands in the next few years?
When your resume becomes longer than your stick, like it has with Jessica Campbell, maybe your argument could be entertained, yet still without merit.
-JC24