Why Was Boughner “Shocked”? Behind Ferraro’s “Warrior” Return Tonight

This was Mario Ferraro on Saturday night, after he deflected Owen Tippett’s shot straight off his jaw.

“I lost one tooth and then my other two bent backwards a little bit,” Ferraro reported today. “So they just tried to fix the top of my mouth here, like upper jaw. But it was a tough 12 hours until I was able to really get treated in the proper way.”

That’s right — Ferraro had to fly with the San Jose Sharks from Florida to North Carolina, in immense pain, to get to the right specialist.

“It’s pretty amazing,” head coach Bob Boughner acknowledged. “To see what kind of injury he had and see what he went through, meeting with surgeons, flying on a plane with a piece of gauze in his mouth, trying to keep his teeth together, his bones together.”

This was Mario Ferraro the next day, as the Sharks dropped a 2-1 decision to the Carolina Hurricanes.

“He saw the surgeon, two and a half hours of surgery in a chair,” Boughner said. “Just to be able to deal with that pain that he was through all night and see him pop out of the chair this morning and come down and say hi to the guys at the team breakfast, it’s the kind of guy he is.”

Boughner told us on Sunday morning, however, that he expected Ferraro to miss Tuesday’s tilt in Tampa.

This is Mario Ferraro today, on the ice for morning skate like it’s any other game day.

“He comes in today and he taps on my door and says I want to play. That just shows you the passion he has, he’s definitely a warrior,” Boughner shared.

“I was mumbling yesterday, because my lip was a little bit swollen. I couldn’t really get many words out,” Ferraro said with a now toothless grin. “I’m still kind of trying to get used to the arrangement on my teeth right now.

“Last night, I started to feel a lot better. Swelling came down, the pain was really [subsiding]. There’s that irritation, but it’s nothing that I haven’t dealt with throughout a game before.”

“I’m shocked,” Boughner said.

The alternate captain, not surprisingly, downplayed it: “Every game is important and I feel pretty good, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t play.”

Boughner, however, wouldn’t let Ferraro off the hook: “Mario is just a little bit of an inspiration, what he went through the last few days to be playing tonight.”