The San Jose Barracuda are the AHL affiliate of the San Jose Sharks, and are one of the handful of AHL teams to play in the same city as their parent team. The franchise began in 1996 as the Kentucky Thoroughblades, where they remained until 2001. The Sharks decided to buy their AHL team, and thus they were relocated to Cleveland, remaining the Sharks affiliate and being rebranded as the Cleveland Barons. This was an homage to the previous Cleveland Barons of both the AHL and the NHL.
In 2006, the team moved again, this time to Worcester, where they became known as the Sharks, before they were announced as part of the AHL’s plan to create a California based Pacific Division, and they relocated to San Jose in 2015 to become the Barracuda.
The franchise has never won a Calder Cup and has only ever made it as far as the 3rd round of the playoffs once, back in the 2016-17 season, where they had their most successful regular season in Barracuda history, finishing first in the Pacific before losing to the Grand Rapids Griffins in the Conference Finals.
In the 2022-23 season, the Barracuda finished 8th in the Pacific Division with a record of 31-34-2-5. They did not qualify for the playoffs.
Their current head coach is John McCarthy, their GM is Joe Will, and they play out of Tech CU Arena.
Notable former Barracuda include Joe Pavelski, Logan Couture, Claude Lemieux and Tomas Hertl.