As part of our ongoing work on Behind The Bench, our project to radically accelerate the number of female and gender-diverse coaches in hockey, our comms lead Denise Withers sat down with Lindsay Pennal, Executive Director of the NHL Coaches Association (NHLCA) to learn more about what she sees as the biggest barriers—and potential solutions to this challenge.
DENISE: Lindsay, you’re a self-professed math whiz with huge experience in the investment industry. How did you end up at the NHLCA?
LINDSAY: Well, I honestly fell into hockey. I spent the first ten years of my career in the investment industry and held progressively more senior roles. By 28, I was a Vice President at a billion-dollar company, but I wasn't feeling inspired anymore. I wasn't waking up and jumping out of bed, excited and passionate for the day. And I wasn't feeling like I was giving back in any way. That led me on a journey to discover where my true passion lay.
I had a career opportunity to relocate to California, and I ended up founding my own consulting firm there, which let me engage with various industries and explore my interests. One of those happened to be the NHL Coaches’ Association, where I started out doing some consulting work. I quickly got more involved with growing the Association and found that the NHL coaches I was working with and supporting appreciated the different perspectives and skills I brought to the NHLCA, particularly as a woman from outside of the hockey industry. So I got to come in on the ground floor and help establish the NHLCA. Now, I'm just about to start my ninth season, and my second as the Executive Director.
DENISE: That’s a great example of the power of bringing diversity into an organization. So you've been doing this for a while now. What are some of the biggest challenges that women and gender-diverse people face as coaches in hockey?
LINDSAY: When I first joined the NHLCA, I was working with all of our NHL coaches, and they were all men. But having just spent ten years in the investment industry, which is also very male-dominated, the lack of gender diversity didn’t immediately dawn on me, especially because there were so many women working in different roles at the league and teams that I’d interact with. It wasn’t until I was in Vancouver for the 2019 NHL Draft, running a coaching symposium for aspiring NHL coaches, that it really hit me.
There were about 500 coaches in attendance, and as I looked out from the stage while giving the opening remarks, I saw only five women in the entire crowd. That was my light bulb moment. I was like, “Where are all the women?” I thought maybe the NHL was the outlier where there were no women, but it became clear that there were very few women coaching in any of the other leagues like the AHL, ECHL, USHL, CHL, or even the NCAA.
That moment on stage prompted me to reach out to some of our NHL coaches I knew had connections with women in the NCAA and I began building my own network outside of the NHL. And that's how it started, with me just having hours and hours of conversations with women coaching across Canada and the U.S., asking about the barriers to their career advancement, the misconceptions they faced, and the issues that affected them differently than their male counterparts. From those discussions, it became clear that there were essentially three areas where we could make a difference.
So to bring it back to your initial question, ‘What are some of the biggest challenges that women and gender-diverse people face as coaches?’. The biggest hurdle is networking.
Men's hockey is still very much an old boys' club, and those in hiring positions often don’t look beyond their close-knit circle for candidates. So, if you're a female coach outside that circle, you might not even know a team is hiring, or even know someone who knows that a team is hiring. Consequently, your resume might never make it into the pile to be considered.
If you look at my Rolodex (do people still know what that is?) you’ll find around 250 NHL coaches and 150 American Hockey League coaches. These guys—and I can say guys because minus a small handful, they’re all men—are at the highest level of the sport and have achieved ultimate success in coaching. I thought, "This is great. I can connect the dots. I have all these women who aspire to coach in the NHL, and I have all these men who have made it. Let’s put them together and connect these networks."
I later realized that connecting women across North America with their own peers, via remote virtual settings, was also crucial so they could learn from each other, share their challenges, and celebrate their successes. As we formalized the NHLCA Female Coaches Program, networking became one of the three core pillars.
DENISE: That’s so fascinating – those are essentially the same insights and solutions that we came up with in our female coaching project earlier this year. But I’m curious because at the minor level, female coaches tell us they still face major challenges in terms of discrimination and harassment, which causes a lot of attrition. How does that play out at the pro level?
At the highest levels, if you're hired onto an NHL bench, it's because you've earned your spot. You need to have the skills to work with those players. From what I've heard, the players just want to get better. They don't care if their coach is a man or a woman; they just want the best coach to help them become the best player they can be and to help their team achieve success.
LINDSAY: One example of how this has played out is Dan Bylsma’s hiring of Jessica Campbell to be his assistant coach in Coachella Valley a couple of seasons ago, making Jess the first full-time female assistant coach in the American Hockey League. He recognized her talent and knew what an asset she would be to the team. He maintained this supportive attitude in how he coached, interacted with her, and communicated with the players. It was never an issue; she was there to help the players get better, and she knew how to do that. And Jess proved herself, because when Dan was promoted to be the Head Coach for the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, he hired Jess to be his assistant coach there as well, making her the first female assistant coach in the NHL.
DENISE: I love to hear that - that’s the kind of attitude we need to trickle down into the minor leagues. Tell us about the other challenges you’ve identified and how you’re tackling them.
LINDSAY: The second challenge I kept hearing about was the misconception that women might be able to coach women but not men.
I found that puzzling because hockey is hockey—it's X's and O's. It didn’t make sense to me that just because a woman didn’t play in the NHL, she therefore couldn’t coach in the NHL.
One way we’re trying to overcome that misconception is that we’re providing resources to support women’s skill development, including the X's and O's, but also everything off the ice as well—communication, leadership strategy, how to run a meeting, plan a practice and address conflict. I want to ensure that all the women in our program have the resources to improve in these areas so that no one can question their qualifications.
The third pillar of the NHLCA Female Coaches Program is visibility—giving these women a platform to share their stories nationally and globally.
By connecting them with interviews, podcasts, radio appearances, print articles, and speaking opportunities at conferences, we aim to normalize the presence of women in high-level positions. If your name is out there in an article, you’re likely to have people reach out to you. That’s why visibility is so important.
In 2022, we also piloted an in-person mentorship program called the NHLCA Guest Coach Program. This initiative involved coaches from our existing women’s program who were closer to being ready for the pro level, like those in the NCAA. We provided them with job placements with NHL clubs during development camps and training camps, along with a few touchpoints throughout the season. This past summer, 17 NHL organizations ran the Guest Coach Program with women or coaches from our BIPOC Coaches Program to learn from their NHL and AHL coaching staffs.
And it’s paying off. We’ve seen significant success in terms of more women and underrepresented coaches being hired in the NHL and AHL, such as Jessica Campbell, and Kim Weiss, who was hired recently by the Colorado Eagles as a direct result of our in-person job shadowing program.
It’s incredibly rewarding and fulfilling to see the work we’re putting in is leading to real change.
DENISE: That all sounds amazing. And those guest programs are a win-win for the club, too, right? Because they're building a talent pipeline by doing that. So my last question is—what are you excited about for the future?
I'm honestly still elated about the first woman being hired full-time on an NHL coaching staff. That is significant and historic. I really feel that the industry is at a tipping point, where the doors are opening, and there are so many new hires at all levels—assistant GMs, hopefully GMs soon, and other roles in hockey operations.
LINDSAY: Those doing the hiring are creating more opportunities. And as diversity increases in various areas of the organization, it positively impacts other roles as well.
So what am I excited about for the future? I’m excited to see the second, the third and the tenth women hired on an NHL coaching staff, and I’m excited for when that’s no longer a newsworthy headline because it’s completely normal.
