NHL Coaches’ Association’s mentorship program lights spark for changes in hockey’s diversity

MONTREAL – You might have expected there to be an air of celebration as the small group of hockey coaches filled into a small conference room in a downtown Montreal hotel a day before the NHL’s 2022 Draft in early July.

And while there were no balloons or cake or the like, there was a palpable sense of excitement as members of the National Hockey League Coaches’ Association’s mentorship program for women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) coaches gathered in person for the first time since programs, aimed at opening doors closed to them for decades, were created on the eve of the pandemic.

Looking around the room, the evidence of the program’s successes were evident and the possibilities those successes represented for the future added to the sense of occasion.

Jess Campbell was there. She had been tabbed through the mentorship program designed by NHLCA president Lindsay Artkin to help coach at the New York Rangers’ development camp after the draft. Then, days before the draft, she was hired to join Dan Bylsma’s staff with the fledgling Coachella Valley Firebirds, the Seattle Kraken’s new American Hockey League affiliate.

Campbell will be the first female assistant coach of an AHL team after serving as an assistant to the German national team at the men’s World Championship earlier this spring, another first for women at the annual tournament.

Duante Abercrombie was in the room. He as part of a groundbreaking development camp program in Arizona last fall documented in the video series NHL Bound which followed Abercrombie, a Division III coach at Stevenson University, and Nathaniel Brooks, a Canadian university coach from Toronto, as they joined NHL and AHL coaches at the Coyotes’ development camp last year.

Both men are Black, and Brooks was recently announced as the Coyotes new skills coach.

The Coyotes hands-on mentorship program has led other teams, including New Jersey, Anaheim, Washington and possibly Vancouver, to offer in-person mentoring programs for women and BIPOC coaches.

“We’re really excited that the teams have put their money where their mouths are,” Artkin told the group that morning.

The news has been impressive on other fronts in the battle to open up the game’s doors. Emily Engel-Natzke became the first woman to be named to a full-time coaching job in the NHL when the Washington Capitals named her video coach. There are now five women in top NHL executive positions including Cammi Granato and Emilie Castonguay who are assistant GMs in Vancouver, Kate Madigan, the assistant GM of the New Jersey Devils, Meghan Hunter now the assistant GM in Chicago and Hayley Wickenheiser who holds the same title in Toronto.

Mike Grier became the first Black GM in NHL history when he was named GM of the San Jose Sharks days before the draft.

And so this morning meeting couldn’t have come at a better time for anyone looking for tangible validation that these kinds of programs work.

Kim Weiss is the only woman on a coaching staff in the North American Hockey League (NAHL), working as an assistant with the Maryland Black Bears. She didn’t land the job specifically through the mentorship program, but the support and information provided through Artkin and her group has been instrumental. When Weiss looked around at the group on this morning she was succinct about the importance of the work being done.

“It’s changed lives,” she told Daily Faceoff. “It changed mine. Yeah. I was working in women’s hockey. I was very happy. I thought I could probably do that for the rest of my coaching career.”

But when she got the opportunity to join a developmental league on the men’s side, she had the confidence to say yes because she had learned and grown thanks to the people she’d been in contact with through the mentorship program.

“Through the program I had the confidence to say yes to my opportunity and to know that I was good enough,” Weiss said. “It wasn’t a happenstance or a cliche kind of thing….it wasn’t a gimmick. It was Kim, we know you, we like you and you’ve talked to 30 NHL coaches over the last two years and they know you and like you and think you’re good too.”

You can almost hear the sound of the dominoes falling all over the hockey world.

Kori Cheverie and Kelsey Koelzer filled the roles Abercrombie and Brooks held in Arizona at this year’s development camp. Each time a moment like this happens it takes another brick out of the wall separating others from similar opportunities and jobs and shines more light on these kinds opportunities and creates more and more potential mentors and contacts and points of access for the next wave of women and BIPOC coaches hoping to climb the coaching ladder.

“Coaching hockey players didn’t change,” Weiss said. “Everyone asks me, ‘Oh how was it was it different?’ And I was like, it really wasn’t. Once you put your skates on and you put your track suit on, you’re just a coach and you’re doing video with players. It’s no difference if you’re coaching males or females, you’re just coaching.”

It’s not that these women need to coach men to justify their talent but it’s about the opportunity to do so if it fits.

“Just meet new people and work with new people and I think that just diversifies me and allows me to get to where I want to be as a coach,” Cheverie said. “I’m asked all the time what my goals are. Do I want to coach on the men’s side? Do I want to coach on the women’s side? And my response is always that I want to take opportunities that bolster my experience, diversify me and then I’m ready for that next job that comes along.”

If there was an underlying theme of this morning meeting held just before the broader annual coaching symposium put on by the NHLCA with 400 coaches from literally around the world, it was a cautionary one, a word of warning not to allow these successes to blunt the desire to keep pushing forward.

That theme was brought home by guest speaker Kim Davis, the NHL’s senior executive vice-president of social impact, growth initiatives and legislative affairs and the driving force on all levels from fans to players to coaches to executives in making the game more accessible.

“We’re not resting on our laurels because we know we have a lot of work to do but we are fueled by our progress,” Davis told the group.

Because Davis deals with inclusion and accessibility at all levels of the game, her perspective on how important the coaching breakthroughs have been is invaluable.

When Davis joined the league four-plus years ago, there was a sense that changing hockey culture meant addressing it at the front office level, “and that there wasn’t a lot of interest, conversation, urgency about how do we change the things that happen on the ice,” Davis said. “And four and a half years later I’m happy to say that attitude has changed dramatically.

“You guys represent progress on the ice,” Davis added.

What is true about the task of creating change is that it can’t just be at one level of the game. For instance, it’s hard to imagine but last March marked the first time that Davis was asked to attend the NHL GM’s annual spring meeting, one of two GM gatherings traditionally held during the season.

Davis reached out to a group of GMs with whom she’d developed a personal relationship and they agreed to come on stage and talk about culture in front of the other GMs and NHL executives.

“And we engaged in a conversation in front of their peers talking about how the world is changing, how the idea of building culture and understanding the experiences in the locker room and the experiences of players was like conditioning a new muscle,” Davis said.

“And for the first time they were talking to each other. And many people at the end of that came up to me and said, you know we have these meetings twice a year and we don’t talk to each other and we just listen to information and we just leave the room. They started a dialogue and from that I got calls from at least 10 GMs saying we want to pilot the locker room training that you guys are working on. So it’s the little things that count. It’s that kind of progress that we are making.”

The NHL is also challenging its clubs from ownership on down to take a hard look at how they can become more diverse and reach out to more diverse segments of their own markets. That, too, has been a process.

“What we continue to see is that there is a willingness by the clubs to want to embrace these things but they don’t know how,” Davis told Daily Faceoff. “They really just don’t know how. If we invite people (like Abercrombie and Brooks) what will they do? What do they know? There’s just this level of naivete around a lot in our system who don’t recognize that there are people in our system that have been ready. These aren’t novices in that these are people who have been coaching for years, so the three words we use with the clubs and the leadership are information, exposure and access. If people have the information to know where to go and how to get it done, if they have access to the seats of power, then they will get the opportunity. The people are ready. Mike Grier was ready. It was exposure, information and access that presented itself and afforded him the opportunity that he got.”

Davis helped introduce a model called ‘the seven dimensions of excellence and inclusion’ to NHL clubs. Those dimensions include; leadership, education, employment, partnerships, marketing, youth participation and community and civic engagement.

These elements are intrinsically linked, but it starts at the top, and Davis said there was been significant growth in the leadership commitment to changing how teams operate vis a vis diversity.

“I presented that model to the owners of the league and today about 85 percent of the clubs are using that model and we’re going around helping training them on the model,” Davis said. “That system’s changing.”

The NHL is a copycat league. It’s how the product on the ice follows a certain pattern: big, heavy hockey or fast skilled hockey, the top teams are emulated by the rest. It has been so for ages. Now the same kinds of dynamics are at play when it comes to equity and inclusion.

Buoyed by the success of the NHL Bound documentary in Arizona, teams started calling Artkin about getting involved in the mentorship programs that had been supported from the get-go by NHL coaches. Now there has been exponential growth in hands-on mentorship opportunities and if Artkin has her way all teams will be involved on some level in a few years.

And while not wanting to get left behind is one thing, so is not wanting to leave money on the table.

The NHL figures women represent about 40 percent of its fan base and with women occupying prominent spots in social media commenting on and following changes in all aspects of the game, it makes financial sense to cast as wide a net as possible in filling openings that would normally have almost always gone to white men.

“I’m comfortable with the level of awareness. I’m comfortable with the fact that the owners are paying attention and it’s cascading down to their leaders,” Davis said in an interview after the breakfast meeting. “Like with most organizations in any industry, things often get stuck of the middle of organizations and so a lot of the work that we’re doing now is making sure that those that have day to day responsibility understand their role in opening up this access. So it’s got to be top down, but it’s also got to be bottom’s up.

“Again this is not for the faint of heart,” she added. “Culture change, organizational change work is not for the faint of heart. It takes resilience, it takes grit, it takes staying power and it takes people being inspired to keep doing when change doesn’t happen fast enough, but most organizations fail because they lose their steam.”

Which brings us back to these people in this room, game-changers, life-changers as it turns out.

Coaching is critical to all of this, because having women and BIPOC coaches in more and more prominent roles sends a critical message throughout a coaching world that extends all the way to mites and learn-to-skate programs: that long-closed doors are slowly but surely opening.

When Artkin started the women’s mentorship program, she imagined that if it all fell together there’d be a woman on an NHL coaching staff in five years. It’s been two.

“So things are coming quickly, which is great,” Artkin said. “It takes the momentum from the Cammi Granatos and Kate Madigans to have the other areas of hockey also to start to catch up too, and coaching has started that. And I think there’s a huge tidal wave that’s coming in that area.”

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NHL Coaches’ Association’s mentorship program lights spark for changes in hockey’s diversity

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