“They’re Excited About What We’re Building" Says Troy Ryan On PWHL San Jose And The San Jose Sharks

Troy Ryan's first calls after taking the PWHL San Jose job weren't to potential free agents or draft prospects.

They were to the San Jose Sharks and Barracuda.

“When I accepted the opportunity here in San Jose, some of the first people that I reached out to were the San Jose Sharks, some of their management group, their coaches, and some of the Barracuda,” Ryan said to The Hockey News.

Ryan wanted to know the market he was walking into.

“They were kind of the first people I reached out to to get a lay of the land, understand the neighborhood and the area and try to assist our players in the transition,” Ryan said. “They were very helpful.”

The conversations made sense.

The Sharks have been in the Bay Area for more than 30 years. The Barracuda added another professional team. The Junior Sharks have spent years building a youth hockey pipeline.

Now, PWHL San Jose will play in the same building as the Sharks at SAP Center.

Ryan doesn't see that as a problem for a team trying to establish its own identity. He sees an opportunity to enter a market where hockey is already part of the fabric.

“It’s a really exciting time in San Jose, because of the work that the San Jose Sharks and the Barracuda have done, as well as the Junior Sharks program,” Ryan said.

There have already been signs of what that relationship can look like.

At the 2026 NHL Draft, the Sharks brought Laila Edwards into the process, giving the fourth overall PWHL pick a place in one of the biggest events on the hockey calendar.

“It’s an exciting time for the Sharks, I look at [Macklin] Celebrini and Will Smith and the NHL draft,” Ryan said. “Them involving Laila in their selections at the NHL draft was a great example of that budding relationship.”

There are more opportunities ahead, including a planned Sharks-PWHL San Jose night.

The teams will remain separate organizations. PWHL San Jose has its own roster, front office and identity to establish.

But Ryan isn't interested in pretending the new team arrived in an empty market. He sees the same thing when he looks beyond hockey.

The Golden State Valkyries sold out every regular-season home game during their inaugural WNBA season. Bay FC drew 40,091 people to Oracle Park in 2025.

Those numbers matter to Ryan because the Bay Area has already shown it will turn out for women's sports.

“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.”

Ryan also had a personal connection to the Barracuda through a player he'd coached years ago who grew up in his neighborhood. But his early conversations with the Sharks were less about that connection and more about learning what already existed.

He was coming into a market with a history he didn't build.

That can make an expansion job easier in some ways.

It can also make the task more complicated. PWHL San Jose has to find its place without simply borrowing the identity of the teams that came before it.

So far, Ryan says, the relationship has felt less like one organization making room for another and more like two hockey teams figuring out what they can do together.

“The biggest thing that I’ve seen so far is we’re really excited to be a part of this hockey market, this sports market, obviously the women’s sports market in the Bay Area,” Ryan said. “But I feel that’s being reciprocated by them as well.”

He sees the relationship as something that can benefit both sides.

“I think it’s great because it’s not just us excited to be part of what they’re building, I think they’re excited to be part of what we’re building as well,” he said.

PWHL San Jose still has to build its own fan base, traditions and identity.

But when Ryan picked up the phone on his first day, he didn't have to ask how to build a hockey market in San Jose. He just had to figure out where his team fit into one that was already there.