EDMONTON – Corey Perry will become, on Sunday, the 24th player in NHL history to reach the plateau of 200 games played in the playoffs.
Two hundred playoff games is more than a statistic. It is an exploit!
Chris Chelios (266 playoff games) dominates this group of 24 players in which we find 18 Hall of Famers and two others – Jaromir Jagr and Zdeno Chara – who should soon be inducted. And there is no doubt that Corey Perry will also be knocking on the door of the Hall of Fame when his career is over. But right now, he is dedicating himself body and soul to the cause of the Oilers who will try to back the Kings into a corner by taking a 3-1 lead in the series on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.
This is all very beautiful. But for now, Perry’s name is more associated with those of the only three Oilers players who are still looking for a first point in the series against the Kings.
The big right winger was not only shut out over his first 50 appearances, but statistically he is the shyest of the three.
Quebec defender Vincent Desharnais plays an important role in the defensive brigade. His average usage time of 18 min 8 sec exceeds Perry’s by four minutes and dust. Even center Ryan McLeod, to whose right Perry plays in the third line, played more than him.
These statistics, timid, we all agree, lead us to conclude that the Oilers missed their target when they opened the door to their locker room, in January, to a player that the Chicago Blackhawks had expelled barely two months earlier . A player who then had to resort to the assistance program put forward by the NHL and the Players’ Association to resolve personal problems.
Behind Connor McDavid who claims nine points (one goal) after three games, Zach Hyman (six goals) and Leon Draisaitl (three goals) who claim seven points each, Evan Bouchard (five assists) and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (one goal, three assists) who all post more than a point per game, Perry seems quite useless.
Yet!
Perry is much more important than his personal statistics would suggest.
Standing in his corner of the locker room, Perry answers questions from the journalists who parade in front of his locker. He plays with his young son who seems to accompany him everywhere… except on the ice rink. With the stern look that has always characterized him, he scans the locker room as if he were analyzing his teammates to determine their level of stress, confidence, and involvement.
Unlike Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl who breeze through the locker room, Perry stays there as if he wants to be the last to leave. What he does before each match when he is the last to leave the ice at the end of the warm-up period.
Discreetly, he commands respect. In fact, his mere presence makes Corey Perry the quiet force his teammates seem happy to rely on.
“I’ve never seen a player manage his involvement in a game so well,” Leon Draisaitl said brightly earlier this week during a press scrum in the Oilers locker room.
“Corey has won everything there is to win in hockey, he has experienced every situation that is possible in a hockey game. Whether with the puck, without the puck, whether between the whistles, he makes the right decisions. It’s a gamer and I consider us very lucky to be able to count on him,” added the one who completes, with Connor McDavid, the two-headed monster of the Oilers.
“I just have to be myself”
At almost 39 years old, Corey Perry is no longer the player who lifted the Stanley Cup in 2007 in Anaheim.
He is no longer the player who won the Hart and Maurice Richard trophies in 2011, who earned a place on the NHL’s first all-star team in 2011 and 2014, who won two medals. gold at the Olympic Games (2010-2014) and added a gold medal at the World Championship in 2016 to secure his place among hockey’s triple gold medalists.
He no longer has the agile hands he used to have. His eight goals scored and 13 points collected in 38 regular season games played since January 27 bear witness to this.
He lost speed. It is obvious.
But he has lost none of his passion for hockey and the intensity he uses to satisfy this passion.
In a locker room with two big stars like McDavid and Draisaitl, talent abounds inside, but a bit of experience lacking, this passion and intensity are exactly what general manager Ken Holland was looking for in helping stars and talent make it all the way.
“I just have to be myself,” is what Perry told me when I asked him, at the dawn of the first game of the series, how he intended to contribute to his team’s success.
Especially since it is by being himself that Corey Perry went to the Stanley Cup final three seasons in a row: with the Dallas Stars in 2020, with the Canadian in 2021 and with the Tampa Bay Lightning who decided to call on his services the following year, after having deprived him of a second conquest of the Stanley Cup.
Known ground, familiar role
If he finds himself in familiar territory in the playoffs, Corey Perry ensures he will inherit a role that is familiar to him with the Oilers.
“I loved my experiences in Dallas, Montreal and Tampa despite the defeats in the grand final. My mandate was to support my teammates. To use my experience. But I would say that the situation with the Oilers is more like the one I experienced in Tampa where there was a lot of talent up front, on the blue line and in front of the net. Connor and Leon, like Kuch (Nikita Kucherov) and Stamer (Steven Stamkos) are exceptional players. They are the ones who set the tone on the ice. But they need support. It is my role to do so and to help those who must support them understand how to get there. Series are hard. It’s exhausting. But that’s the best part of a career and that’s what I want guys to understand instead of just finding it difficult,” Perry analyzed.
At the end of the match on Friday, the Oilers had to deal with repeated attacks from their Kings opponents who were trying to prepare for the fourth game.
The longer this series continues, the more the quiet strength of Corey Perry and his contribution which seems very timid for the moment will help the Oilers’ cause. This will be even more true if the Oilers advance to the second round, reach the conference final and go to the Stanley Cup final.
A final that the Oilers could play for the first time since the spring of 2006, when Corey Perry, at 20 years old, in his first season in the NHL, played the first of his soon to be 200 games in the playoffs.
Simple coincidence or happy omen for the Oilers?
The answer will come at some point. And the later the better for Corey Perry, his teammates and their fans.
