The Story Behind Sharks’ ‘Any Boys’ Sign

The rebuilding San Jose Sharks have to get started somewhere…how about with the right mind-set?

Over the last two years, a Sharks player has been awarded a special plaque after every win. Granted, there haven’t been a lot of those, just 28 over the last 106 games.

But the message on the license plate-like award is exactly where the San Jose Sharks are trying to get to:

ANY BOYS
ANY ONE
ANY TIME
ANY PLACE

Alternate captain Mario Ferraro brought that message with him from Iowa, of all places.

There’s where Ferraro played, before he was drafted by the San Jose Sharks, before he skated at UMass Amherst, with the USHL’s Des Moines Buccaneers in 2016-17.

Des Moines head coach Dave Allison was the originator of “Any Boys”.

“We had the Fall Classic in Omaha,” the veteran coach told San Jose Hockey Now in May 2021, of the league-wide event that kicks off every USHL season. “We had to get up every morning at 6 o’clock. We’d get McDonald’s. We played the early game because we’d bus back to Des Moines.”

That was the first season that Allison used the slogan, and Ferraro ran with it.

Read the Full Story at NBC Sports Bay Area