When the Vancouver Canucks open main training camp on Thursday, Sammy Blais is going to wage the uphill battle of trying to convert a professional tryout into a National Hockey League contract. Landon Ferraro knows the challenge well. Ferraro was in the same boat five years ago when he attended Canucks camp in Victoria on a PTO.
It’s not enough to have a good camp. The deck is stacked against hopefuls on tryouts and the truth of the matter is that regardless of the resumé, players on PTOs simply have to outplay those already under contract.
Ferraro understood the assignment fully. He had just turned 28 in the summer of 2019 and had gone through that offseason without an NHL contract. His only hope for more NHL employment after brief stints in Detroit, Boston and Minnesota was to go the PTO route. So when the Canucks extended the offer, the Trail, BC native jumped at the opportunity.
“Mine was a bit of a different situation coming into Vancouver,” Ferraro said in a phone interview. “I knew that there wasn’t really space for me here. I want to say they were already at 49 (of 50) contracts. So you’re already at a pretty big disadvantage. Talking to them, we knew it would be mutually beneficial for me to come. They needed help with veterans for preseason games filling out their roster and I just needed to be in a camp and making sure I was getting into games. It was one of those situations where you’re trying to impress the team you’re at camp with and you might have a chance there, but you’re really playing for every team in the league at that point.”
For weeks leading up to camp, Ferraro had joined a number of Canucks and local area pros for informal skates at Rogers Arena. So that helped him find his comfort zone when he showed up for the first day of camp. He already was familiar with a number of names and faces in the locker room.
But as he recalls, he didn’t see a lot of those players early in camp. Ferraro got a dose of reality on the first day when he was assigned to Group C – the third skating group of the day and one comprised of players primarily on American Hockey League contracts. That day, as it turned out, Jake Virtanen was banished to Group C as punishment for failing to meet team fitness standards.
Ferraro knew he had nothing to lose and wanted to put his best foot forward for the Canucks coaching staff and management. But he also recognized he couldn’t be something he wasn’t. So he leaned on the experience he’d gathered in 77 career NHL games with the modest goal of earning the opportunity to play at least one preseason contest.
“There are so many different things that go into your head and you’re just trying to simplify it and actually go out and play,” he recalled. “At the end of the day, you are who you and teams know what you can do.”
Ferraro, who is now dabbling in skills coaching and following in his father Ray’s footsteps making weekly appearances as an analyst on Sportsnet 650, clearly did enough during the brief training camp in the eyes of Canucks brass to remain on the roster as the exhibition season opened.
And he got the chance he was looking for on September 17th when he appeared in a Canucks 4-2 win over Edmonton at Rogers Arena. In fact, he did more than appear. Ferraro was fourth among all Canucks forwards that night logging 17:43 and registering three hits. But his biggest recollection was blocking a team-high seven shots – and there was a good reason for that.
“The home game here, I was with Adam Gaudette and Zack MacEwen, Gaudette was in the middle and he was young at the time and could not win a face-off to save his life,” Ferraro said with a laugh (the box score from the night shows Gaudette went 3 & 11 in the circle). “We didn’t have the puck the entire night.”
Face-offs and blocked shots aside, the night as a whole still resonates with Ferraro five years after the fact.
“I moved to Vancouver when I was 10, but left pretty quickly to play junior so I never thought that putting on a Canucks jersey would be that cool” he explained. “But I remember the first time I put it on at camp – that beautiful blue – and then walking out for the one game I got to play at home knowing I had a ton of family and friends in the stands. It was an experience I didn’t know I needed, but I’m really really fortunate that I got to have.”
Ferraro didn’t make it beyond the first week of Canucks camp and that marked the end of his NHL career. He spent the 2019-20 season with Berlin in the German League, played nine games the following season in Frankfurt and finished his professional career with three successful seasons in Cologne before retiring in 2023.
Time has lapsed since his short stint with the Canucks, but it’s an opportunity Ferraro is thrilled he had.
“I definitely got more of a look than I thought I was going to get,” he said. “I really thought I was going to play one, maybe two games just to help out. It was one of the best experiences I had at an NHL camp. It was my last chance. I knew if I didn’t sign on anywhere I was going to Europe. I got treated so well from everyone in the organization, even on my way out the door. I was being told ‘we wish we had space because we’d love to have you in Utica, but we just don’t have it.’ The whole experience was really good. I played centre one game and wing the next and did whatever to get my games in. They did everything and more than they promised and I think I did everything on my side to deliver for those few weeks.”
Ferraro will be an interested observer when Canucks camp opens later this week. Not only will it bring back memories of his short stint with the hockey club, but like many others, he’s curious to see what Sammy Blais will do with his tryout opportunity.
While Ferraro fell short of his goal of cracking the Canucks line-up in 2019, he believes Blais has a legitimate shot to turn some heads and maybe even win a job.
“I played with him in Chicago (AHL) in St. Louis’ system in his rookie year, so I got to know that younger group because there were a lot of them,” Ferraro recalled. “He’s a guy that’s had some knee issues and is trying to battle back from that. When he’s on his game, he’s a big, heavy forward that can make some plays. It’s just, does he have his pace back? If he has his pace, he’s going to make a run at a spot here I think. I’ve seen him from his first year on. The game is there. But as a fellow guy that’s had a lot of injuries, it’s taxing on you and it’s just whether you can get your body to cooperate or not.”
Landon Ferraro has absolutely no regrets about the way his tryout with the Vancouver Canucks went. He had his chance and took his best shot. His PTO ended as most of them do with the hockey club saying thanks, but no thanks. However, Sammy Blais has an opportunity to beat the odds and earn a coveted contract from the team. He knows what he has signed up for and now it’s up to him to overcome the long odds and play his way into NHL employment.
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