Sheng Peng
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.
“He’s really improved,” the scout offered. “He’s turned out to be a good player. He’s a high-energy guy. He likes to play everything at full speed. He doesn’t have a lot of patience in his game, but that’s okay. He does a good job.
“He forces things, but he’s pretty effective. He’s way better at positioning, way better at defending. He doesn’t get caught. He has learned to be a little bit more patient in some areas.”
Here’s a good example of Ferraro forcing the play. On the penalty kill, he blocks the Mikko Rantanen (96) shot – the rebound goes to Gabriel Landeskog (92), but Ferraro’s feet and strength jar the puck loose.
“Where he’s so good is he’s physically strong. That’s where he’s so good,” the scout said. “He can pin a hurry. And he doesn’t get fooled and caught too often. If he does, he learns quickly.”
He also lauded Ferraro’s growing two-way capabilities: “He’s not dumb on defense or offense. He knows how to play.”
Ferraro shakes forechecker MacKinnon, then gets under a Rantanen check for the easy exit.
There’s no doubt that Ferraro has improved leaps and bounds from his rookie campaign. But is he a true upper-echelon NHL blueliner? The San Jose Sharks use him as essentially their No. 2 or 3 defenseman.
“He’s miscast a little bit, but that’s not really his issue,” the scout said. “Some guys get more minutes and all the faults come through their game. They become very inconsistent. They can’t really adjust.
“He’s done all of that. He’s done that in a year and a half. He’s been able to figure out a lot of stuff and things are happening quickly. But he seems like a guy that’s a good student of the game and he pays attention. He’s got some good details to the game.”
According to this scout, Ferraro wouldn’t necessarily be a No. 2 blueliner for most teams, but he’s a comfortable top-four right now. His ability to handle, if not necessarily dominate, his “miscast” high-leverage minutes, already speaks volumes.
Remember, Ferraro is just 22. A rapidly-improving top-four rearguard with another year left in his ELC is worth his weight in gold.
So what does the 22-year-old have to do to crack the league’s elite? The obvious thing would be to slow down, learn to be more patient.
The scout, however, cautioned: “You gotta be careful when you start trying to coach those traits. He is what he is, you know, just accept what he is. We start making them think about being more patient here and there…”
Ferraro just needs seasoning, which he’s receiving now. He’s more than getting by, but can he be better?
“He’ll figure out his range. Right now, he’s pretty effective the way he’s playing,” the scout offered. “When you start playing against better opponents all the time, heavier games, guys who are really smart, sometimes you learn by fire.
“You learn I better not attack so much.”
More Boughner on Ferraro
What impressed the San Jose Sharks head coach most about Ferraro and Brent Burns’s work in a hard match against the vaunted MacKinnon line?
“You can see Mario, there were a couple shifts where he just jumped over the ice and he was already gapped out and MacKinnon was flying at him with the puck, and he managed to get his feet going and put his body and his stick at an angle where he actually defended him really well, especially against the delays and the pull-ups,” Boughner pointed out.
“That’s hard to do. One of the best attributes that McKinnon has, he exposes you with the speed, and when he waits for you to get your feet crossed over, he stops and pulls up. And he creates that big separation for himself.
“Mario is one of those guys that has the feet and has the compete to stick with him. I thought he played him hard.”
Basically, Ferraro stuck not only with MacKinnon’s feet, but the superstar’s stops and starts, his feints and moves.