HARTFORD, Conn. — A new cluster of fans is tuning in to playoff hockey with its exciting games and series and star players unfolding on ESPN, TNT and ABC. Ratings are high, up 15% from the pre-pandemic playoffs of 2019, setting records during the first round.
All this bodes well for the NHL’s new television arrangement, and in the middle of it is Ray Ferraro, the Whalers’ slick winger in another lifetime, now the lead analyst for playoff telecasts.
“My role is to provide some ‘why’ as to what’s happening,” Ferraro said during the off-day between Games 3 and 4 of the Rangers-Hurricanes series. “Everybody’s got a television and they can see what’s happening, my thought is to try to use my experience from playing and from being around the game to explain why it happened. I love the game and I’ve been around it a long time, and I hope that comes across.”
No one’s doing the love or the ‘why’ better than Ferraro, 57, who began talking hockey on television before his playing career ended and has become one of the more respected minds and voices around the game. He does it without schtick, without look-at-me outfits and, whether fans of one team or another want to believe it, with a professional detachment.
“I make it point to not really get to know many of the managers or the players on a personal level other than those I just do know,” he said. “Because I don’t want it to cloud how I analyze a play. You always hear from people who think you’re biased one way or the other, but honestly you’d have to go a long way to find somebody who cares less who wins than I do. My job is not to care.”
You can take that to the bank. Ferraro was the first broadcaster to do an NHL game in which his son, Landon, was a player. It was 2015 and Landon was playing for the Bruins when Ray let it slip only at the end of an interview, telling his son, “Don’t be shy, go get another [goal].”
Another Ferraro trademark is saying more with less, picking his spots. During the Rangers’ win on Sunday, a tense 3-1 game with outstanding goaltending on both sides, never did he get in the way of Sean McDonough’s play-by-play.
“I did get some advice early on, it’s not an accumulation of word count,” Ferraro said. “If you don’t have something to say where you can provide some context then there’s no need to say it. If the audience thinks I’m talking too much, then I probably think I’m talking too much.
Ferraro, from Trail, British Columbia, played in Hartford from 1984-90. He caught the eye of network execs while he was still a player and jumped in full time after he retired in 2002, working in ESPN’s studio. He has spent most of his career analyzing games for Canadian audiences, and was one of the first to move to ESPN when the new deal was announced for this season. He will be doing the Stanley Cup Final for the first time.
“I’m going to stay with what I picked, even though at times I don’t believe it,” Ferraro said. “I picked Colorado and Tampa and I’m not going to change from that. Tampa’s on a roll, experience does matter, it helps you when you get in a tough spot. And Colorado, no one has really found a way to slow them down all year. They’ve just steamrolled everybody.”
That would leave out both the Rangers and Hurricanes, though they’ve staged an exciting series so far. “The margin of each game is almost nothing,” Ferraro said. “It’s been one key play in each game that has kind of tipped the tide. Carolina looks like, and has played like the better team, five-on-five.”
Ferraro’s role model as a hockey analyst is John Davidson, the former Rangers goalie and executive who spent many years in the booth.
“J.D. always had a sense of the moment,” Ferraro said. “He always had a way of finding the most important part of a particular play. I always thought J.D. was so good at telling you what was going on as succinctly as he could.”
In his new role, reaching a wider U.S. audience, Ferraro changes his approach only subtly, perhaps explaining a nuance in a little more detail. He chooses his use of analytics carefully. “If you have to explain what a stat means, there isn’t time,” he said. “The puck will be down the ice.”
Ferraro played for six teams, but was drafted by the Whalers in 1982 and scored 157 goals in 442 games, playing through the franchise’s most successful period before being dealt to the Islanders.
“When we were in Hartford, our group, we were part of the community,” he said. “Downtown was bustling because the insurance business was still there, we would go out and people would know who we are. Because Hartford is the size that it is, the places we were going were the places everyone else was going. I loved it in Hartford. I loved living there. The team was, man, we were just so connected to the community.”
Ferraro is one who likes seeing the Hurricanes, the team the Whalers became, wear the green and the fluke every so often.
“The enduring appeal is that people love the logo,” he said. “The logo is something people, the first time they see it, they don’t know what it is. But they love it and they might buy a hat or a shirt. That keeps the Whalers in the public view.”
The Whalers of Ferraro’s era are also in public view due to the many members of that team who have gone on to become successful coaches and executives. He had no doubt that Dave Tippett would be a coach one day, and as for Ron Francis running the Seattle Kraken, “zero surprise,” Ferraro said.
His wife, Hall of Famer Cammi Granato, is assistant GM with Vancouver, and every so often a hockey pundit wonders whether Ferraro is meant to apply his hockey IQ, clear-thinking and communication skills to running a franchise. It’s not for him.
“I’ve been doing this 20 years and I’m really fortunate to do it,” he said. “There’s no career change path for me. I love what I’m doing. I’ll do it until I don’t or until somebody tells me they don’t love me doing it anymore.”
