Troy Ryan didn't have years of organizational history to lean on. So he recruited a team ready to build the present and the future for PWHL San Jose.
By the time PWHL San Jose reached the third round of its first draft, Troy Ryan and his staff had already made the decision.
If Tia Chan was still available, they were taking her and there was no need to debate it when the clock was running.
“We made an agreement as a group that if Tia Chan was available in that round that we would select her,” Ryan said to The Hockey News.
Chan was still there at number 28. San Jose took her.
It was a relatively small moment in the draft, especially compared to the selection that came earlier in the night. But it was a good example of how Ryan wanted to approach San Jose's first draft.
The organization didn't have years of history with these players. It didn't have a long-established scouting department or a database built over multiple draft cycles.
Ryan had to find another way to get comfortable with the decisions before he had to make them.
“I had familiarity with a lot of the players in the NCAA through scouting with Toronto and the Hockey Canada perspective,” Ryan said.
But Ryan also knew what he didn't know, so he started calling people who had spent years watching these players.
He spoke with NCAA coaches, including Chris Mackenzie at UConn and Matt Desrosiers at Clarkson, who had followed some of San Jose's targets long before they became established college players.
“Their ability to help me with some of the other athletes that were available in the draft and having a history with those athletes, possibly recruiting them when they were 15-16 years old, I found that very valuable,” Ryan said.
A coach who has known a player since she was a teenager has seen more than her college career. They've watched her develop, dealt with her through different stages of her career and seen what she was like before she became a recognizable name in women's hockey.
For a new franchise, that matters. San Jose couldn't recreate years of history overnight. But Ryan could tap into people who had it.
Then, he and his staff started thinking through what the draft might look like.
“We talked about different scenarios that we thought could unfold,” Ryan said. “We discussed whether Tessa Janecke would be selected third, and we also discussed what we would do if Tia Chan was available in the third round.”
The goal wasn't to predict the draft perfectly, it was to have the difficult conversations before the pressure arrived.
“It was a nice feeling when we went through the exercise and we were able to make decisions really quickly because we had already discussed it with a clear head,” Ryan said.
The Chan scenario eventually became reality.
When she was still available in the third round, San Jose didn't have to start from scratch. The decision had already been made.
Laila Edwards Was The Easy Part
The fourth overall pick was a different story.
San Jose didn't need to dig too deeply to know what Laila Edwards could bring.
The Wisconsin defenseman had already established herself at the NCAA and international levels. She had won Olympic gold with the U.S. national team at the 2026 Games and entered the PWHL with a resume that stood out among the draft class.
But Ryan wasn't selecting Edwards simply because of what was on her resume. He also liked the person San Jose would be putting at the front of its new franchise.
“Laila’s awesome. What better person to be able to have as your first draft pick,” Ryan said. “Someone that just enjoys life, enjoys the game, who will be such a great spokesperson for us. She’s so comfortable being herself.”
Edwards will be one of the first players fans associate with PWHL San Jose. She'll help introduce the franchise to the Bay Area while also making the transition to professional hockey herself.
That puts a certain amount of pressure on the fourth overall pick.
“You go in with a plan, to help her develop as a player but also carry a real instrumental role with us, being an expansion team,” Ryan said.
Ryan isn't trying to avoid those expectations.
“The expectations are going to be high for someone like Laila, and I think they should be because of her previous work,” he said.
But he also doesn't want Edwards' draft position or her role with the franchise to dictate how she develops.
“Our commitment to Laila as a player is for us to help her develop into a pro athlete,” Ryan said.
For Ryan, that means paying attention to more than what Edwards does on the ice.
More broadly, he wants San Jose to figure out what each player needs instead of assuming the same approach will work for everyone.
“When you’re working with one of these teams, 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.
There isn't one formula for that.
“I don’t think there’s any one sort of cookie cutter way to approach it,” he said. “Nowadays it’s so much more collaborative, we work with Laila and her goals and desires and the team that she will have around her and try to set her up for the most success we can,” he said.
Building The Roster Without Rushing
Edwards was the centerpiece, but San Jose didn't spend the rest of the draft simply looking for players who could step into the lineup immediately.
Sloane Matthews gives the team another young forward. Chan adds a goaltending prospect. Lily Shannon, McKenna Van Gelder and Reichen Kirchmair give San Jose more players to develop as the roster takes shape.
Ryan isn't expecting all of them to follow the same timeline.
“If you can help that player’s individual development, they become the best player they can be which is great for their careers, and then they become the best player for our organization,” he said.
That's part of the challenge of an expansion team.
San Jose needs to be competitive now, but Ryan also has to think about what the organization will look like beyond its first season.
The first draft was an early test of how he wants to balance those two things and while the picks will ultimately be judged by what the players become, Ryan's process was already taking shape before the draft began.
He knew the players he had seen himself. He found coaches who knew the players he hadn't seen as closely. He and his staff talked through possible scenarios and agreed on how they would handle them.
Then? Some of those scenarios actually happened.
Tia Chan was still there in the third round.
San Jose took her.
For a franchise that was making its first picks, Ryan didn't have the luxury of years of experience to fall back on.
He tried to make up for that before the draft ever started.
