‘That’s why I’m still playing’: Corey Perry on the chase for one more Stanley Cup championship
TORONTO — Eighteen years, nine months and 14 days.
That’s how long it was between the moment Corey Perry first lifted the Stanley Cup over his head and when he answered the phone from a hotel room in Edmonton last week to speak with Daily Faceoff.
Perry, who turns 41 in May, is in the midst of his 21st NHL season. After 50 games with the Los Angeles Kings, the team approached him the day before the March 6 Trade Deadline and said the Tampa Bay Lightning had made an offer. The Kings asked if he would waive his no-trade clause. He accepted it. And for the first time in his career, the 40-year-old Perry was traded during the season.
“I was happy to come back (to Tampa) into the dressing room, knowing most of the guys and the coach staffing and the training staff,” Perry said, who he played with for two seasons and helped reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2022. “It’s been an easy transition.”
The Peterborough, Ont., native has already made an impact in Tampa. Through 13 games, Perry has four goals, two assists and two fights. He scored the game-winning goal in Sunday’s 3-2 victory over the Nashville Predators.
When asked if anything has changed about the Lightning since he last played for the organization in 2023, he said no, adding that the transition has been seamless.
“The guys have been very, very open and inviting,” he said. “It’s an easy dressing room to talk into. It’s a great culture, and you can probably tell by the way they play the game, everybody’s having fun and everybody sticks together.”
Hello Scorey Perry 🪱
DO THE WORM!
New roles in new places
Perry spent his first 14 NHL seasons with the Ducks, playing nearly 1,000 regular-season games before the team bought out his contract in June 2019. At the age of 34, he signed a one-year with the Dallas Stars, a turning point in a career that already saw him win everything a hockey player could: A Stanley Cup, the Hart Trophy and the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy, an OHL championship and Memorial Cup, two Olympic gold medals, a World Championship and a World Junior Championship.
But with how his time in Anaheim came to an end, signing with Dallas signalled a change in his career.
“Sometimes you have to adapt to the new NHL, adapt to a new team, change your style of play,” he said. “I’m just Corey Perry: I just go out and I just do what I do. I’m not playing 20-25 minutes a night anymore, but you can still play 12-15 minutes and be effective.
“That’s how I’ve come to terms with it all,” he added. “Being that player and doing those things and trying to do anything I can to help the team win.”
Perry adapted as a bottom-six winger with the Stars, averaging 13:43 of ice time and finishing with five goals and 21 points in 57 games. But it was in the playoffs where he thrived, scoring five goals and nine points in 27 games, including the overtime-winner in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final to extend the series against the Lightning.
Despite not winning the Stanley Cup, he proved to be a reliable depth option and turned that into a one-year deal wth the Montreal Canadiens. He was again part of a group that pushed through to the Stanley Cup Final and, again, lost to the Lightning. He took the phrase “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” to heart, signing a two-year deal with Tampa.
After another Stanley Cup Final appearance, this time losing to the Colorado Avalanche, Perry and the Lightning would exit after round one in 2023 after a series defeat to the Toronto Maple Leafs. He would eventually sign with the Edmonton Oilers, where he was part of back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances, both of which were losing efforts to the Florida Panthers. Injuries led to Perry joining a line with Connor McDavid and scoring 10 goals in 22 games, finishing tied for fourth among all skaters in playoff scoring.
In a six-year span, Perry has played 117 playoff games — nearly half of his career 237 — all after the age of 35. We ask how he looks at the first chunk of his career, where he was a first-line winger on a line with Ryan Getzlaf, battling with the other California-based teams and the Chicago Blackhawks in the Western Conference, compared to this stage of his career where he’s the “wily veteran” in the locker room, contributing with depth scoring and a willingness to be a pain in the ass and drop the gloves, when necessary.
“I had some pretty good teammates growing up, where I looked up to them, and they showed me how to be a good teammate, how to be a good leader,” he said. “All those little things you do off the ice, the things you don’t see. It’s one of those things where you go to a team, and you jump into a new locker room, but you have to be able to adapt. That’s just who I am.”
‘They’ll have to cut the skates off me’
Twenty minutes into the interview, it’s still been 18 years, nine months, and 14 days since Travis Moen handed the Stanley Cup to a 22-year-old Perry. With the accomplishments Perry achieved in the first half of his career, no one would have blinked had he retired a few years earlier. His former Ducks linemate, Getzlaf, retired in 2022, and he is just one of two players from the 2003 NHL Entry Draft who are still playing (the other being Brent Burns).
But his motivations for continuing to play seem fairly simple.
“I just love being at the rink,” Perry said. “I just love being around a group of guys and going through the season. The laughs, the ups and downs, everything that goes into being part of a team. That’s just what I love. I just want to play.
“Somebody once said that they’ll have to cut the skates off me before I quit and retire,” he added. “It’s kind of been true.”
Towards the end of the call, we ask if he thinks he has one more year in him. He says he does, adding that his son Griffin, who has become a mini-celebrity over the last few seasons, is a big part of it.
“When you have a son that’s eight years old and understands what’s going on and knows all the players and knows all the scores from the night before, you see how happy he is to be a part of it,” he said. “It’s pretty special.”
Corey Perry is set to play in the #StanleyCup Final for the fifth time in six seasons – meaning his seven-year-old son Griffin basically only knows a world in which his dad plays in the Final. #NHLStats
“I don’t think he blinks,” Perry added, noting that Griffin picks up on the tiniest details from every player on both sides of the rink. But it’s the car rides home after the game the 40-year-old father treasures most, where Griffin shares his point of view on the game and asks his dad if he saw how this player warmed up or what he did on this shift. Sometimes, it leaves Perry confused about how he picks up on the little things.
“Well, I was watching, Dad. I was paying attention.”
After talking about his son for several minutes, Perry betrays what may be his true motivation for staying in the game this long.
“There’s one thing left: to hold the Stanley Cup and have (Griffin) touch it,” he shared, his voice cracking. “That’s why I’m still playing, because I haven’t had that opportunity to do that for him, and that’s something we’ve talked about for a long time.
“That’s what it’s all about,” he added. “Watching your kids grow up, while at the same time they’re living a dream, as well.”