The PWHL’s first expansion teams showed that a roster full of proven talent doesn’t always translate into a team that works. Troy Ryan has a chance to take a different approach in San Jose.
The temptation in expansion is pretty obvious: take as many proven players as possible and trust the rest will sort itself out.
Seattle and Vancouver showed that it doesn't always work that way.
The PWHL's first expansion teams entered last season with plenty of recognizable talent. Both had opportunities to add established players from around the league and build competitive rosters right away. They weren't short on experience, either, with players who had already played professionally and represented their countries at the highest level.
Neither made the playoffs.
Vancouver stayed in the race until the final week of the season, while Seattle was eliminated by Vancouver on April 14. That doesn't make either expansion season a failure, especially considering the interest both teams generated. But their first seasons did offer a pretty good look at one of the difficulties of building a team from scratch: having a lot of good players doesn't necessarily mean you have a team that works.
That's something Troy Ryan has had a chance to see before putting together PWHL San Jose.
San Jose has plenty of individual talent. Laila Edwards went fourth overall in the 2026 PWHL Draft after winning Olympic gold with the United States. Rory Guilday arrives after helping Ottawa reach the Walter Cup Final. Daniela Pejšová has spent years playing for Czechia's national team, while Kristin O'Neill gives Ryan a two-way forward who won 272 faceoffs last season, fourth-most in the league.
There are plenty of players on the roster who should get attention. The bigger question is how they fit together.
That's where Ryan's approach becomes interesting. When an expansion team has the chance to add established players, it's easy to build around résumés and production. Ryan has instead put together a group with quite a bit of versatility, giving himself some room to adjust once he gets a better sense of what the roster needs.
His experience with Canada's national team should help. International hockey isn't the same as the PWHL, but Ryan has spent years bringing players together from different teams and backgrounds and getting them to function as a group on a relatively short timeline. He has plenty of experience figuring out which players complement one another and what each player can give a team.
Edwards is a good example.
She entered the draft as a defender, but has experience playing up and down the ice. Ryan has already talked about the possibility of utilizing her talent however possible, whether on the rush or on the penalty kill. Rather than deciding exactly what Edwards needs to be, San Jose can figure out where she gives the team the most.
Guilday offers something different. She was one of Ottawa's more physical defensemen last season, leading the team in blocked shots and finishing third in the PWHL in hits. She also played eight playoff games during Ottawa's run to the Walter Cup Final.
San Jose doesn't need Guilday to reinvent her game. It needs her to bring what she already does well to a new blue line and find the defensemen she works best alongside.
Pejšová brings another set of strengths, particularly her international experience and defensive game. O'Neill gives Ryan a center he can use in important situations and someone who can contribute at both ends of the ice. They may not be the players who generate the most headlines, but those kinds of pieces often determine whether a lineup actually holds together.
That's something Seattle learned during its first season.
Seattle coach Steve O'Rourke talked last season about his team taking time to find its rhythm and having inconsistent connections in areas such as breakouts, forechecks and regroups. Those aren't problems you can solve by moving a name around on a depth chart. Players have to learn where their teammates are going to be and what they're going to do with the puck.
Ryan can't manufacture that kind of chemistry when he builds the roster. He can try to put players together who make sense, but they'll have to develop the rest once they're on the ice.
His dual role as General Manager and Head Coach makes that even more important. Ryan is responsible for putting the group together, but he'll also be the person deciding which combinations work, who gets the difficult minutes and when something needs to change, and things will change.
A line that looks good in training camp might not work in November. A player expected to be in the top six could fit better somewhere else. Someone further down the depth chart could play well enough to force Ryan's hand.
The first expansion teams had to figure those things out as they went. Ryan gets to start with a little more information about what that process can look like.
He also has something more tangible: players who have already been through it.
San Jose has added three former Seattle players in Corinne Schroeder, Mariah Keopple and Brooke Bryant. Their experience doesn't guarantee San Jose will avoid the same problems Seattle faced, but it gives the organization a few players who know what it is like to walk into a brand-new PWHL locker room and try to make it work.
For Ryan, the goal isn't to make every player on the roster a star. It's to put together enough players who know what they do well, understand their roles and can make the players around them better.
That's the part that can't really be evaluated until the games start.
By then, the roster won't just be a collection of Ryan's decisions anymore. It will be a group trying to figure itself out, and whether those individual pieces can become something cohesive will say much more about San Jose's first season than the names on the depth chart ever could.
