Kraken add PWHL Torrent head coach Christine Bumstead to youth-focused development camp

The Seattle Kraken opened their next prospect-development window by welcoming Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) Seattle Torrent head coach Christine Bumstead to their development camp, a move framed as adding “a different perspective” for the group of young players in attendance. The camp marks the continuation of a multi-year run, with the Kraken kicking off a fourth straight season of this type of developmental programming.

Development camps are typically where an organization can slow the game down for prospects and emphasize the details that do not always show up on a highlight reel. That includes learning habits around decision-making, positioning, puck management, and how to adjust in real time when opponents change their coverage. In that setting, coaching variety can matter as much as the drills themselves, because different backgrounds often translate to different teaching points and language.

Bumstead’s role specifically connects the Kraken to the PWHL environment through the Torrent, where her day-to-day focus is on preparing women’s players at the professional level. The Kraken’s stated reason for the collaboration is rooted in perspective, suggesting that the organization is looking beyond a single coaching pipeline and toward cross-learning between leagues.

The partnership also reflects how both the Kraken and the broader hockey ecosystem continue to treat women’s and men’s pro talent as part of the same overall hockey culture, especially at the development stage. When an organization brings in a head coach from another top league, it is usually intended to broaden what prospects see as “normal” in high-performance routines, from how practice time is structured to how leadership and responsibilities are reinforced.

While the announcement does not detail the specific on-ice sessions or responsibilities Bumstead will take on during the camp, the practical impact is clear: prospects get exposure to a coach who leads within a different competitive context. For young players, that can translate into new cues for reading plays, adjusting to pace, and thinking through matchups, even if the fundamentals of skating, passing, and shooting remain constant.

Seattle’s development-camp choice lands in a summer window where many NHL organizations are also evaluating how to build long-term systems around player growth. The Kraken’s message centers on collaboration, and it points to a broader strategy that treats development as something you actively curate, not something prospects simply “arrive at” through repetition.

For prospects and development staff, the most immediate question is how the camp’s coaching mix will show up in the week’s work. Watch for whether Bumstead’s presence influences how players are coached through contact, defensive-zone assignments, and transitional decision-making, since those are common areas where coaching perspective can quickly become visible. The longer-term test will be whether this kind of cross-league collaboration helps the Kraken’s pipeline produce players whose skills translate under NHL-style pressure.