If it’s Saturday, this must be St. Louis
Ray Ferraro spent 18 seasons as a player in the National Hockey League, but he never experienced a road trip like the one he just completed in the first round of the playoffs.
Ferraro, who is now a colour commentator for TSN, had one stretch of six games in six nights, going from New Jersey to Philadelphia to Chicago to Pittsburgh to St. Louis and back to Philadelphia.
“There’s a great line: I hope you like this shirt, because you’re going to see it again,’ and that’s pretty much it,” Ferraro said with a laugh Thursday afternoon when I asked him how he packed for the trip.
“Most of the time I know where I am, but every once in a while you wake up and you get ceiling shock … you look up and you’re not real sure for the first couple of moments where you are,” he added from his hotel room in Florida, where he was preparing to work Game 7 of the New Jersey-panthers series, which the Devils won 3-2 in double overtime. “It’s been really busy, but for the most part I don’t think we’ve had a bad game yet, to tell you the truth.”
TSN actually had to charter a plane to get its crew of about 17 people from St. Louis after last Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. game to Philadelphia in time for a noon start on Sunday. A member of the TSN technical staff had T-shirts made up saying: “6 games, 6 nights, 6 cities, 4,530 kilometres – one crew.”
“The people realize when they turn on their TV and they go, ‘Geez, there’s Gord and ray again. ’”ferraro said. “But the (technical) guys that you don’t see, they work 36 straight hours. They had to put all the stuff in for St. Louis, take it all out after the game, fly to Philly and then put it all in. And it all has to be in when we’re ready to do our stuff at 11 a.m. The technical people did an unbelievable job in this round.”
So did Ferraro and Miller, who I believe make up the best duo of hockey announcers in the country, followed closely by CBC’S Jim Hugh- son and Craig Simpson.
“You certainly fall into a rhythm and you start to learn when the other guy is going to talk,” Ferraro said of his partnership with Miller.
“There are definitely challenges working up and down,” Ferraro added of Miller being in the press box while he is at ice level between the two benches. “When you’re side by side, if you want to jump in you can just give him a hand motion, but he can’t see me now. Every once in a while you step on each other, but I think this is the best way to do games. I love being on the ice. I think I can catch little things that I can’t see 100 feet above the ice, and our play-by-play guys are so good there’s nothing missed.”
From where he stands, Ferraro hears a lot of yapping between players, much of what he says is “unrepeatable.” But there are also some funny moments.
“The one that just cracked me up is that early in that Pittsburgh-philadelphia series the Penguins were losing their mind, it seemed like,” Ferraro recalled. “They were so undisciplined. (The Flyers’) Scotty Hartnell, without even raising his voice, was driving (the Penguins) crazy. He kept saying, ‘What’s wrong with you guys? ... What’s wrong with you?’ It was almost like a parent admonishing a child, and they were getting more and more angry. It was actually pretty funny.”
Ferraro was selected by the Hartford Whalers in the
“I found it’s okay
to be critical as long as I was
being fair.”
TSN’S RAY FERRARO
fifth round (88th overall) of the 1982 NHL entry draft. In his final year of junior in 1983-84, he scored an incredible 108 goals and added 84 assists with the Brandon Wheat Kings. In the NHL, he played for Hartford, the New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Los Angeles Kings, Atlanta Thrashers and St. Louis Blues, scoring 408 goals and adding 490 assists in 1,258 games.
“Judging from my Twitter account, I don’t think people realize that I played,” Ferraro said with a laugh. “You get all kinds of people. I mean, I scored 400 goals ... it’s not like I just fell off a turnip truck.”
I asked Ferraro if as a former player it can be difficult at times to be critical in his current job.
“The game is way harder than it looks,” he said. “It’s really easy to say, ‘Oh, that guy’s got to make a better play with the puck.’ But often times, there’s something that has forced him into that mistake. While sometimes you have to be critical, I found it’s okay to be critical as long as I was being fair.
“I don’t want to go out there and bash guys over the head, but there are times when you have to point out a mistake. But just as often there’s some really good stuff happening that forces the guy into the mistake. And while you can point the mistake out, in my opinion you’ve got to point out what great play or good play was made. That’s what I’m supposed to be able to know as an ex-player. I’m supposed to know the subtleties of the game. And that, I think, is really kind of the strength that I have.”
While Ferraro enjoyed the action on the ice during the first round, it also kept him away from his wife, Hockey Hall of Famer and former Concordia University star Cammi Granato, and their two young sons in Vancouver.
“There is a real challenge family wise,” Ferraro said. “I got little guys, too, they’re 5 and 2. (He also has two older boys, age 23 and 20, from his first marriage). It’s a little easier than it used to be because you can Skype or ichat or whatever you have, so I get to see them quite a bit online, but it’s still not the same.”
Ferraro actually had a day off on Friday and was able to spend a few hours with his wife and kids in Chicago, where they were visiting Granato’s parents. But Friday night Ferraro was back on an airplane headed for St. Louis.
He’ll be at rinkside Saturday night for Game 1 of the St. Louis-los Angeles series.