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Age not slowing down playoff-staple Corey Perry
Corey Perry is in his element during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. At age 39, all that’s left for the Oilers forward is one more time in the winner’s circle.
LOS ANGELES — If you’ve written the game out West for any length of time, you can probably go through your own personal archives and find a market-specific version of Corey Perry’s greatest hits.
They tend to start with some unseen infraction, and end with his primary role in the ensuing power-play goal that buried the team you cover — with a still shot in between of Perry, palms skyward, a “Who me?” look of amazement on his face over how everyone could be blaming him, again.
Now, my Edmonton-based catalogue won’t be identical to Iain MacIntyre’s in Vancouver, or a perfect match to what haunts the laptop of Flames lifer Eric Francis. But for a player we like to call “Brad Marchand West,” the common themes won’t be dissimilar — Perry having aggrieved Pacific Division fan bases without prejudice through most of his 1,392 regular season and 219 playoff games.
At 39, Perry is, as colleague Jim Matheson called him recently, “One for the aged.”
“You love him on your team,” legendary head coach Rick Bowness told me once. “I know he’s a pain in the butt, but from the tops of the circles in and around their net, he is one tough guy to handle. He hangs on to the puck, he’s big, he’s strong, he’s got great reach… And he’s got great patience — very good at hanging on to it and waiting for something to happen.
“All the things that winners bring to the table, he brings to the table.”
That is all that’s left for this product of that legendary stable that is the London Knights hockey factory — one more time in the winner’s circle.
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Perry has somehow found himself on four of the last five Stanley Cup finalists and lost each time — in Dallas, Montreal, Tampa and Edmonton. The fact his teams have had that consistent level of success, of course, speaks volumes for a guy who was on the ice for all four Oilers goals in a 4-3 overtime victory Sunday, scoring one himself in typically greasy fashion.
“He’s just elite,” said Leon Draisaitl, “He’s nearly 40 years old and has an impact on every single game. It’s incredible. He’s one of the smartest hockey players I’ve ever seen. He just reads the play before it happens and knows exactly how to manoeuvre himself into situations to be successful…
“He plays on the fourth line and is successful, he plays with Connor and I and he’s successful.”
On Sunday, Perry wormed his way on to the top power-play unit in place of Zach Hyman, after having scored or screened on the previous three Edmonton goals. He’s in his element, here in a Canadian springtime, like Derek Jeter in the October grass of Yankee Stadium, or Tiger walking an Augusta fairway in March.
“There’s no better time to play than from May to June. This is what you dream of as a kid; this is why we play the game,” he said after Game 4. “You hear that building and see the excitement of the guys in here. We play for one another — we’re a family in here — and that’s what you do.”
How did he partially supplant Hyman as the net-front guy on Edmonton’s power play?
“Corey has a little more touch around the net,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Zach will certainly win you more battles for loose pucks, and continue plays a lot more. They’re both right-handed shots, so it’s not like we have different plays for one or another. Both are excellent options for us.”
Only 12 players have ever played more than Perry’s 219 playoff games, and barring injury he’ll tie or pass Bryan Trottier for 11th place during this series. He started the season as a fourth-line right-winger, but in the biggest game of the year Sunday, there was Perry, hopping the boards with two of the game’s best players on a power play late in the first overtime period.
He did not get an assist on Draisaitl’s OT winner, but without Perry carving some space out from Darcy Kuemper’s real estate, the goal never happens.
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“He can play any game,” marveled Draisaitl, still a full decade younger than Perry, who turns 40 in about three weeks. “He understands what he has do to put himself in good situations, but what doesn’t get noticed is how he puts other people in good situations. He puts Connor and I in them because he demands so much attention in his career and continues to do so.
“I honestly think he could play until he’s 50, just because of his brain. We’ll see if the boots keep up there, but, uh, he’s just a gamer.”
When he joined the Oilers after being dismissed by the Blackhawks, his first game came on a line with young Dylan Holloway, a Calgary-area kid who sheepishly that his grandpa had always hated Perry.
But it was never about regular season games for Perry. He’ll play ‘em, but over 20 NHL seasons, they’ve simply become a means to the end.
“There’s just something about the playoffs. I feel like there’s a different scent in the air,” he said on the day he arrived in Edmonton. “You push everything to the side, and for eight weeks you have one job.
“There’s nothing better than winning, and that’s what it comes down here,” he said. “That’s why you play this game.
“To win.”
