The San Jose Barracudas will honor their legendary former head coach Roy Sommer with a pregame ceremony and flag-raising ceremony on Jan. 10 at Tech CU Arena. Replica banners will also be presented to the first 2,500 fans that night, and the team will wear San Jose Rhinos jerseys, representing the now-defunct professional roller hockey team that Sommer coached for two seasons and led to a league title in 1995.
Notable alumni will be in attendance, and prior to warm-ups, a ceremony will be held to honor Roy and his family and chronicle his historic AHL coaching career.
“I met Joe (Will),” Roy recalled. “He came up and said, 'We're going to have a special night for you… holding up a banner.'” I was like, 'What? for what? '”
As the winningest coach in AHL history and a 2024 AHL Hall of Fame member, this night may have been a surprise for the Cowboys, but it wasn't.
“It's an honor,” he said. “You don't really notice all the years that have passed until it's done. I raised my family as sharks. They've always known Teal.”
Roy's story begins in Oakland, where a young kid played on the Berkeley ice, improbably out of passion.
“I never thought it would go back to where it was,” he said. “We used to drive through San Jose to visit my grandparents in Ben Lomond, and it was all cherry orchards. Who would have thought they would have a team in San Jose?”
He worked around the old California Golden Seals, Northern California's first NHL team, and even served as a guest bat boy, helping to deliver goal information through the ticker in front of the computer.
In the mid-1990s, Doug Wilson called Roy with an offer that sounded more like a summer adventure than a career move:
“Do you want to come out and coach roller hockey?”
Roy had never coached roller hockey in his life, so he called his friend Chris McSorley.
“Chris said, 'Awesome. Three months of gigs. Guys on roller skates.'”
So Roy joined the International Roller Hockey League with the San Jose Rhinos,
The tape was mailed to him just to learn the rules.
“It was probably the best move I ever made,” he admits now.
Little did he know, roller hockey would lead to an interview with the Sharks, then an assistant coaching job, and eventually a 24-year backup career at San Jose's AHL affiliate Kentucky, Cleveland, Worcester and finally back to his hometown of San Jose.
Before he ever coached, Roy was playing and winning everywhere he went. Calder Cup Champion. Champion of International Humanitarian Law. During his time in the NHL, the California kid scored while sharing the ice with Wayne Gretzky.
But coaching became his life.
The spark began in a pool in Jamaica, when his coach in Muskegon asked him if he had ever considered moving behind the bench.
“That's how I started coaching,” Roy said simply.
Since then, he has coached more than 150 players who have graduated to the NHL, which he considers to be the true legacy of his career.
“In the American League, if you kick two, three, four guys a year, you've done your job. That's what we do.”
He prides himself on his honesty, even when it's difficult.
“Don't lie to them, and you'll never have to lie to them,” he said.
His famous “ten games” became part of the culture.
“I’d say, ‘Throw anything at the wall and if it sticks, we’ll deal with it.’ Sometimes people would tell me things about them that I never knew. One person said, ‘I’m a web front-end person. “I put him in there and he ended up scoring 25 goals. Another guy said, 'I don't want to be on the power play, I like the killing penalty.' “He became a great penalty killer.”
For Roy, the best part has always been 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 all possible: his wife, Melissa.
“Honestly, if it wasn't for her, I don't think I would be sitting here,” he said.
She built her career as a special education teacher and is now a coordinator at Flathead Community College while supporting every move, every city, and every late night bus ride.
“She never got tenure anywhere because we were always moving, but she was a great teacher,” Roy said proudly. “She took care of the house while I was on the road. She sacrificed a lot.”
His daughter Kira recently got married in Brooklyn and will travel there with her husband on January 10.
“She's really happy now,” Roy said with a smile. “It's going to be fun having her here.”
His son, Caston, is now a rising coaching star, already thriving at Quinnipiac after successful seasons in the NCAA and WHL.
“He's a lot smarter than me,” Roy joked. “He put everything into it. He did it all on his own.”
And then there's Moe, Roy's eternal shadow and the heart of every dressing room he enters.
“He probably rode the bus with me for 750,000 miles,” Roy said with a laugh. “The players love him. They don't even ask me, they ask Mo.”
A legacy carried to the rafters On January 10, the Barracudas will wear the Rhinos' signature jerseys, another full tribute to Roy's journey. Former players will return. The fans will cheer. Roy's name will forever stand on the ice in the new, state-of-the-art Tech CU Arena.
All roads lead back to San Jose.
