Jets Sign Mario Ferraro to 3-Year Deal

Ferraro was drafted 49th overall in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft by the San Jose Sharks. After being selected, he played two seasons at the University of Massachusetts before making his NHL debut and becoming a full-time NHLer for the 2019-20 season. He now has seven NHL seasons under his belt, all with the Sharks, and, despite being 27, he has already served as an alternate captain for four seasons.

A Tough Case to Judge

There isn’t much of a way to frame this signing in an exciting way. The offensive numbers aren’t eye-popping, with a career-high seven goals and 23 points, which he set last season.

However, that is not what he is paid to do. Ferraro would be classified as more of a shutdown or defensive defenceman. But it’s still tough to make that case with the situation he’s been in with the defensively inept Sharks.

Typically, with a guy like this, you would want to look more toward his on-ice stats and see if the team is positively impacted while he is on the ice. However, in Ferraro’s case, it’s hard to do that given how bad the Sharks have been in recent years and how often he was deployed in the defensive zone.

For starters, in 2025-26, the Sharks allowed the 10th-most shot attempts per game and the fourth-most shots on goal, while only putting up the sixth-fewest shots on goal and shot attempts per game, resulting in the third-worst shot share in the NHL.

Combine that with Ferraro averaging the 14th-most defensive zone faceoffs and the 33rd-most defensive zone starts per 60 minutes among the 215 defencemen to play 500 minutes last season, while also factoring in that he ranked in the bottom 20 of the 215 in both offensive zone starts and offensive zone faceoffs per 60, and it’s understandable why his on-ice numbers finished as some of the worst on the Sharks’ blue line.

Ferraro Is a Reliable Blue Line Addition

The main knock on Ferraro is that he struggles to move and carry the puck, but it’s hard to knock that too hard, considering many of his shifts started with him being hemmed in his own end.

Defensively, the Jets can count on Ferraro to have a big impact individually. Last season, he finished 14th in blocked shots and 23rd in hits among defencemen in the NHL, and over the last three seasons, he sits 14th in blocked shots and 23rd in hits.

There are some red flags with Ferraro, and it’s hard to know if they are flaws in his game or if he was just in a tough situation. If he’s paired with a quality puck mover, I think he adds a ton of value to the Jets’ blue line. But there is a good reason to be skeptical of this contract, given how poor the underlying numbers have been.