For Troy Ryan, San Jose Was An Opportunity to Build From Scratch

Troy Ryan wasn't looking for an established team when he left Toronto.

He wanted to build.

After three seasons as head coach of the Toronto Sceptres, Ryan had already experienced the PWHL's early years. He knew what it was like to coach in the league, to build a roster and to establish a culture. But Toronto was one of the league's six original franchises. The foundation was already there.

San Jose didn't have one and for Ryan, that was the appeal.

When the PWHL offered Ryan the chance to become the first General Manager and Head Coach of its 12th franchise, he saw an opportunity that was difficult to pass up: build an organization from the ground up and have a say in nearly every hockey decision along the way.

“My career, up until the PWHL had been more around building, either taking over a struggling team and trying to build it into a competitive team or taking over and working with a newer organization to build it into a respectable franchise,” Ryan said to The Hockey News. “So this opportunity in San Jose just seemed so exciting to me. The opportunity to build an organization, a franchise from the ground up and have a key leadership role in that growth was just something that was really exciting to me.”

Ryan was officially named San Jose's first GM and head coach in May. Since then, the job has been about more than putting together a roster. He's helping decide what the franchise is going to be.

That starts with the players, but it extends to the coaching staff, development structure and culture. As San Jose prepares for its first season in 2026-27, Ryan has the unusual opportunity to make those decisions without having to work around an existing franchise identity.

That's a challenge, but it's also familiar territory.

Much of Ryan's career has been spent building programs. His work with Hockey Canada, including the national women's team, gave him years of experience developing players and putting teams together. His three seasons in Toronto gave him a look at the PWHL from inside one of its original markets.

San Jose gives him a chance to put all of that together in one place. The location was part of the draw, too.

Ryan is from Nova Scotia, a long way from California. But rather than viewing San Jose's lack of a traditional hockey market as a drawback, he saw it as one of the reasons to take the job.

“I’m from probably about as far as you can get from San Jose [in Nova Scotia], but the non-traditional market side of San Jose, which for some people might be a negative aspect, was the most enjoyable and exciting part for me,” Ryan said.

The Bay Area isn't short on sports fans or sports teams. What it doesn't have is the same hockey culture that exists in places like Toronto or Montreal. Ryan sees opportunity in that.

“We often talk about trying to grow the game, the game of hockey, women’s hockey,” Ryan said. “And what better place to do it than in an area like the Bay Area, which supports women’s sports to the level they do.”

The PWHL is entering its fourth season with 12 teams, doubling in size from the six franchises that launched the league in 2024. Seattle and Vancouver joined before the 2025-26 season, while Detroit, Hamilton, Las Vegas and San Jose are entering the league for 2026-27.

For San Jose, the challenge is introducing professional women's hockey to a market that isn't traditionally considered a hockey hotbed.

But Ryan isn't starting from zero.

“There is a real opportunity to grow the game in a non-traditional market,” he said. “It’s a really exciting time in San Jose, because of the work that the San Jose Sharks, the San Jose Barracuda and the Junior Sharks programs have done.”

The San Jose Sharks have been part of the Bay Area sports landscape since 1991. The San Jose Barracuda have provided a professional development pipeline, while the Junior Sharks have helped build the youth hockey community. Ryan can tap into all of that.

PWHL San Jose will play its home games at SAP Center, sharing the building with the Sharks. The franchise is entering a market that already has a hockey fan base, rather than trying to create one from scratch. That doesn't mean building the team will be easy.

Ryan has to give fans a reason to care about a group of players they've never seen play together. He has to establish leadership, determine roles and create a style of play while the roster itself is still coming together.

The first major test came at the 2026 PWHL Draft.

San Jose selected Wisconsin defender Laila Edwards with the fourth overall pick before adding forwards Sloane Matthews, Lily Shannon, Mckenna Van Gelder, Reichen Kirchmair and goaltender Tia Chan. 

Edwards was the obvious headliner.

She was the first draft pick in franchise history and immediately became one of the most important pieces of what Ryan is building. THN's grading of the PWHL's draft classes gave San Jose an A, pointing to Edwards as the potential face of the franchise and highlighting the depth Ryan added throughout the draft. 

But Ryan isn't looking at Edwards simply as a fourth-overall pick who needs to produce immediately. He's looking at the player.

“You never get the best out of your athletes if you don’t take the time to step back a little bit and think first about the person and their own individual development,” Ryan said.

That approach is going to be important with an expansion roster.

San Jose's early construction has leaned toward players with room to grow rather than simply loading up on established stars. The franchise's first 10 signings reflected that approach, with Ryan assembling a relatively young group built around mobility, versatility and long-term potential.

There are veterans in the mix, including Kristin O'Neill and Corinne Schroeder, but much of the roster is made up of players who still have another level to reach. That's intentional.

Ryan isn't just trying to figure out which players can help San Jose win its first game. He's trying to determine which players can become the core of the team.

That's part of what makes the job different from his previous PWHL experience.

In Toronto, Ryan worked within an organization that already had its expectations and identity. In San Jose, there is no previous season to compare against. No former captain to live up to. No established way of doing things.

Ryan gets to set the standard.

Ryan's responsibilities are considerable. He's the person responsible for the roster, but he's also the person responsible for coaching that roster.

The PWHL has never had another coach-GM combination.

For Ryan, that's part of the challenge. It's also part of why he wanted the job.

“My career, up until the PWHL had been more around building,” Ryan said.

San Jose gives him perhaps his biggest building project yet.

There is no guarantee that the team will be an immediate contender. Expansion teams rarely have the luxury of knowing exactly what they are going to become. San Jose still has questions to answer, particularly when it comes to scoring, and Ryan will have to find out how quickly his younger players can adjust to the PWHL. 

For now, Ryan is more interested in what comes next.

The Bay Area gives him a market with an established professional sports audience, an existing hockey infrastructure and a growing women's sports scene. The PWHL gives him a league that is still young enough for an expansion franchise to make its own mark.

And San Jose gives him a blank slate.

“It’s just an exciting time to be involved in hockey in the Bay Area and an exciting time to be a part of women’s sports,” Ryan said.

That's what Ryan wanted when he took the job.

Not a team with a finished identity.

A team that needed one.