EDMONTON — Corey Perry is, basically, Brad Marchand West.
As hated by Edmonton Oilers fans over the years as Marchand is by Leafs Nation, they’ve cursed Perry’s name in Northern Alberta since that night on Oct. 10, 2005 when he slipped his first NHL goal past goalie Jussi Markkanen, to the time in the 2017 playoffs when the Oilers blew that 3-0 lead with 3:15 left in Game 4 down in Anaheim.
The refs were dead blind that night, as they always seemed to be around Perry, and the Oilers were as nervous as a young team could possibly be. And guess who outwaited Cam Talbot in double-overtime to save the day for the Ducks?
Yep, the same guy Oilers fans will be forced to begin cheering for this week, after general manager Ken Holland signed Perry to a rest-of-the-season, cheapo deal — $775,000 plus another $325,000 available in games played bonuses — that will place Perry in the Oilers dressing room as they take their sternest run to date at a Stanley Cup under captain Connor McDavid.
He is, you’ll have to admit, one of his generation’s truly clutch players. Even if he has always been a sneaky, dirty rat.
“You kind of described him yourself there,” Joe Pavelski told us once, as he and Perry were carrying the Dallas Stars to a Stanley Cup Final loss to Tampa inside the Edmonton bubble. “You just have an understanding that, whatever it takes, that’s what he’s going to do to win. You can feel the mindset, in the locker room or on the ice.
“Whatever it takes. There was no bigger moment for us tonight. He showed up and got it done.”
That night, with their Stars trailing the series 3-1, Perry had opened the scoring and then won the game with a goal in double-OT. Two goals in a 3-2 win, with the Stars facing extinction.
He was brilliant.
“I was in the league at 22 years old and had the opportunity to win,” Perry said that night in the bubble. “Here we are, 13 years later and I have a chance to do it with this group.”
The Stars lost that 2020 Final with Perry, the way Montreal lost in 2021 and Tampa lost in 2022, as Perry moved around in search of one more ring to add to the Stanley Cup he and Ryan Getzlaf won as NHL sophomores in Anaheim back in 2007 — when McDavid was a 10-year-old kid.
Today, that journey leads him to Edmonton at age 38, where Perry finds as good a chance to win one more Stanley Cup as any veteran could ask for today, on Jan. 22, 2024.
He is a free agent after his contract in Chicago was terminated when he committed a non-criminal, to date nondisclosed indiscretion.
Perry apologized publicly, sought and received a pardon from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, and from that moment Holland let agent Pat Morris know that an Oilers team that has bettered itself by adding the controversial Evander Kane two Februaries ago would have a dressing room stall and a uniform ready for Perry as soon as he was ready to join them.
Why, you might ask? This is why:
Two springs ago the Oilers were swept in the Conference Final by a Colorado Avalanche team that was clearly better and further along the Stanley Cup journey than they were. So the Oilers came back, and a year later lost in six games to a Vegas team that was not, in fact, head and shoulders ahead of where Edmonton thought they were.
The Oilers had led every game of that six-game series, but watched from the lakes and clubhouses of a hockey man’s summer as the Golden Knights hoisted a Stanley Cup that this team still believes could have been theirs.
So the Oilers went to work on the little things in their collective game, and through the duration of this 13-game winning streak — and the surrounding 21-3 run — we can see the tangibles of a team that looks ready to win games that they used to lose come May and June.
Corey Perry? He is in charge of the in-tangibles.
Sure, they’ll ask for a clutch goal or two from this fourth-line right winger along the playoff trail. And if Zach Hyman misses a few shifts or a game along the way, Perry may be asked to man the net front on a powerplay or two.
But here in Edmonton, where the leadership group has won and lost enough playoff series since 2017 to know what to do, Perry arrives as the icing — not the cake.
He’ll replace Adam Erne and take up no more cap space. He’ll perhaps take the odd shift on Leon Draisaitl’s right flank, but will play far more minutes next to Derek Ryan or Dylan Holloway.
And he’ll be what he’s always been: a pain in the ass to whomever the Oilers play against.
Oh boy, Oilers fan.
This is going to take some getting used to.
