Mario Ferraro Likely To Test Unrestricted Free Agency

A captain in the NCAA, Ferraro quickly took on more of a leadership role in San Jose. In 2021-22, his age-23 campaign, Ferraro was named an alternate captain and has held onto that status through 2025-26.

Now 27 years old, Ferraro has a chance to earn a life-changing contract this summer.

He’s on the younger side when it comes to unrestricted free agents, meaning interested teams can go into negotiations with Ferraro with less fear of the risks of age-related decline. That factor will help him drum up league-wide interest on the open market.

An additional factor aiding Ferraro’s case in free agency is his experience. While he has not yet played in the playoffs in his career, Ferraro has handled a top-four, if not top-pairing workload for a half-decade. His average time-on-ice per game for his career is 21:14, but that’s weighed down by his rookie season, when he averaged just 15:53 per game. From 2020-21 through this past season, Ferraro has averaged 22:00 time on ice per game.

He has consistently played a heavy workload in San Jose, including in 2023-24, when he was the team’s No. 1 defenseman. He has also been a fixture on the penalty kill, leading the team in time-on-ice per game while short-handed in three of the last four seasons.

While offensive production has never been a major element of Ferraro’s game, his ability to weather significant minutes stands out in what is expected to be a thin free agent class. AFP Analytics projects Ferraro to receive a four-year, $5.1MM AAV deal as a free agent, though that could be a conservative estimate given the way player costs have risen as projected increases in the cap have gotten priced into contracts on a more regular basis.

San Jose has more than enough cap space to afford to match any offer made to Ferraro in free agency. PuckPedia projects the Sharks to have nearly $42MM in cap space this summer. But the Sharks have to plan carefully, as they have extensions for their young stars to consider down the line, and they won’t want to commit too much money too far down the line in order to preserve as much financial flexibility as possible for when Macklin Celebrini and others are eating up significant portions of the cap.

Additionally, taxes are a factor that works against the Sharks whenever they look to bid on free agents. While they have had success in the past on the open market, suggesting they have been able to work around this obstacle, the reality is players take home a greater portion of their salary playing in a low-tax market such as Tampa Bay, or Nashville, than in a market like San Jose.

The tax calculator tool provided by Cardinal Point Athlete Advisors shows that if Ferraro were to receive identical offers at AFP Analytics’ projected salary ($5.13MM) from San Jose and Tampa Bay, respectively, Ferraro would pay an additional $705K per year if he took the Sharks’ offer, compared to Tampa Bay’s. Over the lifetime of a four-year contract, that is nearly $3MM difference between the two offers.

In other words, the Sharks and other markets are at a natural disadvantage when competing for free agents. Of course, the Sharks do have some advantages, such as their climate and up-and-coming roster. It’s difficult to isolate the free agent decision-making process to just one variable. And it has to be said that the true tax situation NHL players navigate is far more complex than a simple side-by-side calculator will be able to reflect.

But given all of the things working in Ferraro’s favor, it’s no surprise that he would want to see what kind of offers he’ll receive from around the league before deciding whether to move on from the only NHL franchise he’s ever known.