Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

38

Mario Ferraro

San Jose Sharks Defense

Twenty-one minutes a night on the worst club in the league, a minus-25, and a career minus-120.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20SJS612911-1530000633.215:53
2020-21SJS5611617-622000581.722:26
2021-22SJS6321214-516001494.123:00
2022-23SJS724711-3124000666.121:36
2023-24SJS7831821-38360001242.422:52
2024-25SJS7851217-2553001796.321:24
2025-26 so far
Career408177491-1201810024393.921:17

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

5 goals and 12 assists in 78 games — 17 points at 21:24 a night, the largest assignment on the club, minus-25, with 53 penalty minutes.

46.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 21st percentile, across 1,415 minutes. His ice went 47-73 against an expectation of 53.86-62.33 — seven goals of scoring missing and eleven conceded above expectation, which is mostly the goaltending.

The Finesse Game

79 attempts in 78 games at a median of 55 feet with 74 per cent from beyond 40 and 7 per cent from inside 20. He does not shoot and 5 goals is a career high.

The first pass is the puck game and under a heavy forecheck it becomes the chip off the wall. 12 assists is what a defensive defenceman produces on a club that scored 204 goals.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 200 and he plays a great deal larger. He blocks shots at a rate among the highest in the league, he finishes every check, and he clears his crease against men who outweigh him considerably.

53 penalty minutes in 78 games. He does not back out of anything and a share of the total is the answer to something done to a teammate.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2017 out of Massachusetts, and 408 games with a career minus-120 — one of the largest in the league and a fact about six seasons in San Jose rather than about him.

He is 27, he has been the club’s most-used defenceman for four years, and he has played every one of them on hockey teams that finished near the bottom of the league.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,415 minutes

Expected goals
46.4%
21st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46.9%
22nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 47 for, 73 against. Expected: 53.9 and 62.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
42nd
Numbers
21st

The report ranks him 21 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1415 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club
SJS took 44.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.4% — 2.2 above the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,415 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Timothy Liljegren46.9%46.0%48.5%
Tyler Toffoli46.2%46.4%51.2%
William Eklund47.1%46.1%51.2%

46.9% together, 46.0% for him apart and 48.5% for Liljegren apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

124 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.