Winning Play: How Good Is Ferraro Now? A Scout’s Take | SJHN+

It’s easy to get caught in an echo chamber when you’re covering one team on a daily basis.

For the San Jose Sharks, that’s the Mario Ferraro hype. As I wrote earlier in my Quick Thoughts: Ferraro “is 35th among all NHL defensemen in Time on Ice Per Game. And the 22-year-old is probably just getting better. There are just 10 23-or-under blueliners with higher average usage than Ferraro: Ivan Provorov, Thomas Chabot, Adam Fox, Cale Makar, Zach Werenski, Charlie McAvoy, Filip Hronek, Miro Heiskanen, John Marino, and Jakob Chychrun.”

Whatever the circumstances, that is impressive.

Bob Boughner, naturally, reinforced the acclaim: “He’s gonna be a guy that, for a long time here with the Sharks, he’ll be playing against the best players on the other team with the job of shutting them down.”

Here, Ferraro (38) handles the Nathan MacKinnon (29) rush with aplomb.

Looking at Ferraro’s usage, it’s easy to conclude that the sophomore has already arrived as a top-pairing NHL defenseman. But is that more Ferraro or San Jose’s 8-10-2 record?

I talked with a league scout, not associated with the San Jose Sharks, and he shared his thoughts about Ferraro.