I've been thinking recently ... what is Ferraro good at? The organization values him a lot, putting the A on him and giving him lots of minutes. To me he should model himself after Vlasic - a solid defender that doesn't worry about anything else. He's good at blocking shots I suppose. He can be over-aggressive with defending, but is pretty physical, and I think he should be even more physical. With the puck he's okay but sometimes he's too high-octane for his own good, where he'll mishandle a puck because he's not controlling it smoothly. And I can't for the life of me tell if his skating is good or not. He seems to have a more choppy stride and needs to work harder than most to achieve the same result. You look at the best skaters and their easy strides and he's kind of the opposite. He always looks like he's giving max effort because he is, and needs to to match the speed of better skaters.
He kind of reminds me of an aggressive Justin Braun, Doug Murray, or Brad Stuart almost. He’s the definition of good at a lot, not great at anything. I think if he had a more steady partner, it would be better. He’s a great shot blocker, very physical, fine with the puck. I would agree though, he’s not great at decided when to be aggressive and when not to be and that’s the biggest issue. He has all the necessary skills to be a good second pairing defensive option but his brain tells him to go for the big hit or to chase someone behind the net or whatever and it leads to him being out of position. I thought it was something that would come over time but now in his fourth season I’m not so sure.
Now despite all of this, I still don’t agree with trading him. He has flaws for sure but he also has heart that you can’t teach. I know guys like Vlasic, Braun, Murray etc all were good to great shotblockers but the only other guy I’ve seen consistently putting his body on the line like Ferraro in my 10+ years watching the Sharks is Couture. Now I’d like to push him down on the depth chart a bit to fourth best D but the Sharks just don’t have that luxury. If Ferraro was paired with a guy like Cernak, Pulock, etc or a good defensively RD, they could be a pretty solid shutdown 2nd pair. Issue is he’s been paired with EK (who is fantastic but isn’t going to cover for Ferraro being physical/aggressive), Vlasic, Simek, Benning, etc and it just hasn’t worked because all of those guys are third pairing at best D (except EK which I explained above). Ferraro shouldn’t be the undisputed best D on his pair. Even someone like Braun would have been really good with Ferraro.
Yeah I know it's why I went with JJ instead.
Make the pick top 10 protected to sweeten the pot
Yeah i mean BUF has a lot that I like including JJ, Samuelsson, Savoie, Ostlund, Quinn, etc. I’d love to get Jokiharju as a throw in.
