David Perron heating up for Senators after a wild ride on and off the ice

OTTAWA — In our endless sports dialogue we toss around phrases like “life and death,” “state of emergency” and “crisis management.” 

Families know the real meaning of these words.

Ottawa Senators winger David Perron and his wife, Vanessa Vandal, have learned more about the priorities of family and hockey over the past eight months than they care to know. This week, Perron spoke to Sportsnet.ca at length about how his family was blindsided by a life-threatening crisis involving their baby they hadn’t even met. 

In the calm aftermath, Perron says he now “knows too much” about prenatal care and delicate surgeries. A father knows best, we used to say. This father could have been excused for feeling overwhelmed by a health-care emergency of his unborn daughter but stepped up in the clutch for his partner, as he once did on the ice to help bring a Stanley Cup to the 2019 St. Louis Blues. Now, he dreams of doing likewise with the upstart Senators. 

As she shared during one of her star turns on the TV series Hockey Wives, Vanessa met David in Sherbrooke, Que., during the NHL lockout of 2012-13. 

“On our first date, we ended up talking in a parking lot until 4 in the morning,” Vanessa said. “Six months later, I was with him in St. Louis.”

Perron, a big scorer with Lewiston of the QMJHL, was the 26th-overall pick of the Blues in 2007, the year of Ottawa’s run to the Cup final.

Fast-track to 17 years later: Perron, Vanessa and their growing family had not yet settled in Ottawa after Perron was signed by the Senators as a free agent on July 1, 2024.  

At home in Sherbrooke, Vanessa was cruising through her fourth pregnancy when something felt amiss. It was mid-August, and Vanessa was approaching her seventh month. Her contractions felt just a bit “off” and, as a precaution, the Perrons went to the emergency ward of the Sherbrooke hospital. 

“Clearly the instincts of a mother,” Perron says. “A gut feeling.”

The news was stunning. Their unborn daughter had a growth on the outside of her right lung, a mass that was putting pressure on her little heart. If left unchecked, it could cause a fatal heart attack. Doctors spoke of in vitro surgery and a visit to a Toronto hospital. With another significant surgery to follow, after the birth. 

For Perron, it must have felt like one of those myriad Netflix series where the doctor speaks of a frightening diagnosis and your mind races, no longer hearing the words. 

“From that point on, it just was just a world where they put us in a spin cycle, where we had to constantly re-adjust on the go,” Perron says. 

Emotions were raw. Tears were shed. Vanessa was “devastated” with worry over the risks, Perron says. What was the worst-case scenario? What kind of life could this baby girl face, if she survived, minus a lung or worse?

“It got to both of us at times, where you’re kind of getting on each other’s nerves, and that’s putting it nicely, probably,” he says, laughing. 

“I was trying to manage my emotions, too, but not showing it,” Perron says. “I was trying to be, like — let’s not think about what can happen in a week. Let’s think of today. My wife was caught up in the big picture and I was trying to be the hockey coach and narrow it down to the small things you can worry about.”

One of the first steps was processing the news that a fetal surgery could be done, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, which has a strong thoracic surgery program. 

The exact condition and procedure? Brace for it: a large, macrocystic congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation (CCAM) of the lung, for which a fetal thoracoamniotic shunt (TAS) is used to drain fluid from the cyst, reducing its size and potentially improving fetal outcomes. 

Perron says they were told the condition affects about one in 10,000 fetuses and is not related to genetics. 

The procedure is designed to reduce the mass, which gives the fetus a chance to reach full term. Only a chance. These types of interventions often trigger a premature birth. The due date was not until late October, so if the procedure put Vanessa into labour, the baby faced further risks by coming into the world two and a half months early. 

The Perrons expected to be in Toronto for a day or two. Instead, Vanessa was in hospital for a week. Following the successful fetal surgery in August, the Perrons lived with the fear that at any moment they might have to rush to hospital for an emergency C-section. There were checkups two to three times per week at Ottawa General Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. 

Agonizingly slowly, the weeks passed. But pass they did. 

“One of the small miracles that happened, once that in vitro procedure worked, she was able to bring the baby to full term,” Perron says. “That lets the baby develop all her organs better. The other lung was fine. We needed that (healthy) lung to develop as fully as possible.”

Vanessa and David had settled on the name Elizabeth on the way to Mount Sinai for the shunt procedure in August.

“I needed her to be real before risking losing her,” Vanessa said, in a later post on Instagram. 

Once born, on Oct. 27, baby Elizabeth underwent major surgery at CHEO to remove the mass on her lung. The care the family received went above and beyond. The first time Vanessa met one of the CHEO specialists, they both — doctor and mother — shed tears together. 

“I was just standing to the side,” Perron says. “I couldn’t believe it, for the doctor to be that invested in our case when she’s seeing probably 10 or more cases in a day.”

Five months later, baby Elizabeth is as pretty as her portrait. Healthy and getting stronger. The Perrons are finally able to feel settled in their new city of Ottawa, enjoying its bilingual flavour. 

“She’s great,” Perron says of his daughter, the youngest sibling to Mason, 9, Victoria, 7, and Sophia, 2. Lightly, Perron taps the wood of the bench on which he sits, in a meeting room across from the Senators dressing room. 

“I knock on wood every time I say that. But she’s clear of everything they looked at. All the testing of the mass and all this stuff she’s had to go through, including the surgery. Just the other day, my wife and I were looking at her scar and it’s fading away more and more. 

“As the days go by, we can’t believe it, to be honest,” Perron adds. “It’s surreal that, since we had that tough news in the middle of August — an in vitro surgery to be followed by an emergency surgery at birth — everything has been very positive. We’re extremely lucky and grateful. Over the last couple of months, she’s started to smile and interact with us.”

The Perrons have been told that Elizabeth is going to have a normal, active life. Surgeons were able to save a good part of the affected lung. 

“These are special people,” Perron says of the health care providers at CHEO.

Vanessa posted the news on Elizabeth: “she’s our little miracle and is already a fighter.”

On the ice

Though not as dramatic as his personal life, the hockey side of Perron’s first season in Ottawa has taken no fewer twists and turns. 

A nagging injury in training camp slowed him down, and then he was away from the team to be with his wife and family during the prenatal crisis and his baby’s post-birth surgery in late October.

Perron returned to the lineup on Nov. 16 and appeared in four games, all losses, before being sidelined with a back injury. Finally, he was activated again on Jan. 23, by which point he had appeared in a grand total of nine games with zero points. 

“When you change teams, it’s tough to re-establish yourself in a whole new situation, and now the guys are playing games in December, January and February, and I’ve barely got my feet under me as far as the hockey side,” Perron says. “That was very draining. I tried to take it day by day so that when I got my break, I would take advantage.”

Oddly, he felt that an early line with Shane Pinto and Mike Amadio was getting some traction. 

But it was after the March 7 trade deadline, when head coach Travis Green assembled a line of newly acquired centre Dylan Cozens with Perron and winger Drake Batherson that Perron’s play took off. 

In March, Perron has seven goals, three assists and is a plus-7 in 15 games. The Senators have won 10 of them. The veteran has visibly lifted the play of his young linemates. 

“They’re smart players, all three of them,” Green says of the Cozens-Perron-Batherson unit that has been his most consistent line of late. 

“When they’re on their game, they’ve shown they can be a handful in the offensive zone, protect pucks down low and spend quality time in their end.”

Now it’s Perron who gets talked about as the ideal late-season acquisition, even if he was actually signed last summer as a free agent. 

Energy to burn

Perron could always score, a pretty consistent 20-plus goal man over his career. Less appreciated has been his physical play and control of the puck along the wall. He has that so-called “man strength” that coaches love and opponents loathe. 

“I pride myself in winning my battles,” Perron says. “I think there’s an emphasis on that because I’m not the fastest guy, so I have to key in on certain areas on the ice. So that no one can outdo what I do. It’s funny. I might win 10 puck battles in a row and then I lose one, it really digs away at me for a long time. The guys always say I don’t lose many battles, but I remember the ones I lose.”

He’s already impressed Cozens. 

“In my short time with him, I’ve learned a lot from him,” Cozens says. “He’s made the game easier for me. It’s awesome to play with a veteran like that. 

“He’s talking lots. He loves getting everyone fired up. He loves talking. He loves when everyone’s getting into the game, and hyping everyone up. He’s definitely a big voice in this room.”

Considering Perron could barely speak a word of English when he first went to Lewiston, Maine, as a teenage junior, he has since made up for it. The young Sens love Perron’s stories of the “old days” in the NHL. 

Perron admits he loves to talk, but he also encourages young voices to join in the fray.  

When Perron played for Ken Hitchcock in St. Louis, Hitch had a favourite saying when things took a bad turn. 

“I don’t know if you could picture Hitch with that voice of his, but he’d say — ‘Guys, don’t go quiet on each other,’” Perron recalls. 

“When you lose, or things don’t go your way, the first thing you do is go quiet. So, let’s do the opposite of that.”

Young players such as Batherson marvel at the vigor of Perron, who will turn 37 in late May.  

“He’s probably one of the most energetic guys on the team, to be honest with you,” Batherson says. “I don’t know how he does it. He’s got four kids at home and he brings so much energy to the rink, it’s crazy. I’ve never seen it.” 

Being in Ottawa and playing on the same team as young captain Brady Tkachuk is a full-circle moment for Perron. As a 19-year-old rookie in St. Louis, Perron was mentored by “Big Walt” Keith Tkachuk. Perron was routinely at the Tkachuk house for dinner, including for holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving. After dinner, he’d head downstairs and take part in the now renowned mini-stick games between brothers Matthew and Brady, Keith’s sons. There are classic photos of young Perron with the kid Tkachuks. 

“When Matthew came in the league, I was proud of that because I was like, ‘I remember this kid when he was 10, 11 years old,’” Perron says. “And the way he was playing, with the grit and all that, people were saying, ‘Wow, this guy’s crazy.’

“I was like, ‘Wait till you see the next one!’”

Perron was referring to the bigger, stronger, kid brother Brady. 

Interestingly, when Perron speaks of Brady, he talks more about his heart than the rugged play on ice, a trait he traces to the boys’ mother. 

“You see how big his heart is, he’s all about the families around and supportive of everybody,” Perron says. “And I don’t want to say that Big Walt doesn’t have a big heart, because he does. But I think Brady picked that up from his mom, Chantal.

“That family means so much to me, how they welcomed me in St. Louis. … I was a teenager and alone in St. Louis.” 

On a recent Senators dads’ trip to Buffalo and Detroit, Perron posed for a Tkachuk-Perron father-son photo, just another surreal moment for Perron this season, 18 years after breaking into the league with the Blues and a tough mentor in Walt. 

Now, Perron is one of the veterans trying to guide the Senators on the precipice of what would be the first NHL playoff experience for the young Ottawa core, including Tkachuk, Jake Sanderson, Thomas Chabot and Tim Stutzle. 

He encourages his mates to enjoy this stretch run and the potential playoff ride. 

“Every game will get bigger,” Perron says. “And then just when you think you’ve played your biggest game, well, guess what? You’re going to have to get re-energized for the next one in two days. You’ve got to find a way.”

When the Blues won the Cup in 2019, Perron scored seven goals and 16 points in 26 playoff games. His linemate and close friend Ryan O’Reilly won the Conn Smythe Trophy. 

“O’Reilly had one of the biggest impacts on me in my career,” Perron says. “Not once did we ever go on the ice and say, we’re going to score a goal. We played with structure, with intensity, winning puck battles and the results happened. I learned that from him.”

The Blues, in last place at mid-season, rode the wave to the Cup. 

And then collapsed in a wild mix of joy, relief and exhaustion. 

“When you win, you can’t believe you got there,” Perron says. “That Game 7 in Boston in 2019, I think all 40 players that played, 20 on each side, were like — finally, there’s no games tomorrow!”

For the 2025 Senators and Perron, there are still plenty of games to come. 

Veterans Perron and Claude Giroux will help lead the kids on. 

“You want to be a good influence on the guys,” Perron says. “At times spark them, at times calm them … and you don’t always know which way it’s going to go.”

Whatever adventures lie ahead won’t be as scary as the ride Perron and his family took this season, in an actual life-and-death experience. 

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