On January 10 at Tech CU Arena, the San Jose Barracuda will honor their legendary former head coach Roy Sommer with a pregame ceremony and banner raising. The night will also include a replica banner giveaway for the first 2,500 fans, and the team will wear specialty San Jose Rhinos jerseys, representing the now-defunct professional roller hockey team that Sommer coached for two seasons and led to a league championship in 1995.

Notable alumni will be in attendance, and before warmups there will be a ceremony honoring Roy and his family, chronicling his historic AHL coaching career.

“I ran into Joe (Will),” Roy recounts. “He came up and said, ‘We’re gonna do a special night for you… raise a banner.’ And I was going like, ‘What? For what?’”

The AHL’s all-time winningest coach and a 2024 AHL Hall of Famer, the night may have been a surprise for the “Cowboy,” but it shouldn’t be.

“It’s an honor,” he said. “You don’t really notice all the years that have gone by until it’s done. I raised my family as a Shark. They’ve always known teal.”

Roy’s story begins in Oakland, where is unlikely passion started a young child playing out of Berkley Ice.

“I never imagined it would come back full circle,” he says. “We used to drive through San Jose to visit my grandparents in Ben Lomond, and it was all cherry orchards. Who would've thought they’d put a team in San Jose?”

He worked around the old California Golden Seals, Northern California’s first NHL franchise, even acting as a visiting stick boy and helping relay goal information through ticker tape before computers.

In the mid-90s, Doug Wilson called Roy with an offer that sounded more like a summer adventure than a career move:

“You want to come out and coach roller hockey?”

Roy had never coached roller hockey in his life, so he called a friend, Chris McSorley.

“Chris goes, ‘It’s a blast. Three-month gig. Guys on rollerblades.’”

So Roy jumped into the International Roller Hockey League with the San Jose Rhinos,

having tapes mailed to him just to learn the rules.

“Probably the best move I ever made,” he admits now.

Little did he know that roller hockey would lead to an interview with the Sharks, then an assistant coaching job, and eventually the start of a 24-year run behind the bench for San Jose’s AHL affiliates: Kentucky, Cleveland, Worcester, and finally, back home to San Jose.

Before he ever coached, Roy played, and won everywhere he went. A Calder Cup champion. An IHL champion. A stint in the NHL where the California kid scored a goal while sharing the ice with Wayne Gretzky.

But coaching became his life.

The spark started by a pool in Jamaica, when his coach in Muskegon asked if he’d ever considered moving behind the bench.

“That’s kind of how I started coaching,” Roy says simply.

Since then, he’s coached more than 150 players who graduated to the NHL, something he considers the true legacy of his career.

“In the American League, if you’re kicking 2, 3, 4 guys up a year, you’re doing your job. And that’s what we did.”

He prided himself on being honest, even when it was hard.

“Don’t lie to them, then you never have to lie to them,” he says.

His famous “10-game meetings” became part of the culture.

“I’d say, ‘Throw anything on the wall, if it sticks, we’ll work with it.’ Sometimes guys would tell me something I never knew about them. One guy said, ‘I’m a net-front guy.’ I put him there and he ended up with 25 goals. Another said, ‘I don’t want to be on the power play, I like killing penalties.’ And he became a great penalty killer.”

For Roy, the best part was always the people.

“That’s what I miss the most, the interaction.”

Ask Roy about his career, and he’ll immediately point to the person who made it possible: his wife, Melissa.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’d be sitting here without her,” he says.

She built her own career, special education teacher, now a coordinator at Flathead Community College, while supporting every move, every city, every late night on a bus.

“She never got tenure anywhere because we were always moving, but she’s an excellent teacher,” Roy says with pride. “She ran the household while I was on the road. She sacrificed a lot.”

His daughter, Kira, recently married in Brooklyn, will be there on January 10 with her husband.

“She’s real happy right now,” Roy smiles. “It’ll be fun having her out here.”

His son, Caston, is now a rising coaching star of his own, already thriving at Quinnipiac after successful stops in the NCAA and WHL.

“He’s way smarter than I was,” Roy jokes. “He soaked everything in. He’s done it all on his own.”

And then there’s Mo, Roy’s constant shadow and the heart of every locker room he entered.

“He’s probably put on 750,000 miles on a bus with me,” Roy laughs. “Players love him. They don’t even ask about me, they ask about Mo.”

A Legacy Raised to the Rafters On January 10, the Barracuda will wear specialty Rhinos jerseys, another full-circle nod to Roy’s journey. Former players will return. Fans will cheer. And in the new state-of-the-art Tech CU Arena, Roy’s name will rise permanently above the ice. 

All roads lead back to San Jose.