Eight years ago, David Perron feared he might be finished. Now he's played in over 1,100 games and scored more than 300 goals in the NHL. He's played in over 100 playoff games and won a Stanley Cup. And he doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon.
“As you get older and you achieve things like 1,000 games last year, you look over the summer at what’s kind of within reach, and (300 goals) was one of them,” Perron said earlier this season. “It’s funny because you get excited, you can’t wait to hopefully get there, and then you’re happy it’s over and happy to move forward. And that’s the beauty of it. You always want to keep getting better, you always want more. I’m gonna have to start thinking about the next one.”
The next one for Perron is probably 800 points, a group comprised of 23 active players. That’s out there for him next season. But Perron’s focus is on this season. He’s become a leader on a Red Wings team trying to snap a seven-year playoff drought. He turns 36 in May, a month in which the Wings haven’t played a game in 11 years. If playoff hockey is a different animal, Perron belongs in the foxhole.
“He’s definitely one of those guys you love having on your team,” said Robby Fabbri, who’s played with Perron in both St. Louis and Detroit.
In other words, said defenseman Jeff Petry, “He’s a pain to play against.”
“He’s feisty, he’s strong on the puck, he’s never going to give up on a play. If you strip the puck from him, he’s right back at it. That’s a skillset that makes him hard to play against, but also that teams are always looking for,” said Petry.
“Pain," said defenseman Ben Chiarot, "would be the best way to describe him."
Chiarot smiles about it now, because it’s no longer his pain to deal with. He’s been teammates with Perron for the past two seasons. But when they were on opposite sides, “we’d always get into it,” said Chiarot. “He’s a guy who’s always sticking his nose in there. He’s not afraid to mix it up. In front of the net, me and him would always be going at it, whacking each other, cross-checking. Definitely had our battles.”
Perron is one of the few battle-tested forwards in the Red Wings’ lineup. It’s one of the reasons he’s uniquely valuable to this team. The Wings added another a few months ago in Patrick Kane, who was drafted first overall in 2007 -- 25 picks before Perron. They broke into the NHL the next season, Kane with the Blackhawks, Perron with the Blues, and would clash in countless games as rivals in the West. Now they’re teammates in the East.
“Tough to play against,” said Kane, “because he keeps possession and protects the puck. Also one of those guys that’s not afraid to chirp and talk to the other team and get into that stuff as well.”
To which Chiarot adds, “He’s kind of speaking English but with a French accent, so you never really know what he’s saying.”
There’s a photo from a couple seasons ago that captures this dynamic. It shows Perron, then with the Blues, yapping at a 20-year-old Moritz Seider. The expression on Seider’s face is something between amused and annoyed -- bemused, you’d call it. The rookie defenseman looks like he’s literally pulling a thorn out of his side. Seider’s partner, Jake Walman, has never been on the other side of Perron in a game, but he can be every bit the barb in practice. He just doesn’t stop.
“I’ve kind of experienced that in training camp and there was definitely a point where I was like, ‘Fu*k this guy,’” Walman laughed. “But that’s just him: he’s competitive and he talks a lot, and that’s probably the thing that gets under peoples’ skin. You gotta respect somebody that competes and wants to win.”
In a sport that crowns persistence, it’s high praise to be called a pain. Perron laughs and says, “I can’t tell you how many times I would go to a new team or someone would come to the team that I was on and be like, ‘Oh, I hated to play against you.’” He said half the locker room told him that when he joined the Golden Knights in the expansion draft; it was no mistake that a brand-new team added a notoriously tenacious player. When he arrived in Detroit two years ago, a bunch of Red Wings said the same.
“Perron? Before he was a teammate, I hated him,” Dylan Larkin said with a smile.
“And I always take that -- like, I’m laughing -- like, are you supposed to love playing against someone?” said Perron.
“He’s in your face, he doesn’t back down and he’ll let you know that he’s there and he’s going to be playing against you all night,” said Larkin. “Now that I play with him, nothing but respect for what he does and how hard he plays every game.”
When Larkin was knocked out by a blow to the back of the head from Mathieu Joseph of the Senators earlier this season, it was Perron who immediately charged Sens defenseman Artem Zub in response. He crossed the line and was served a six-game suspension for cross-checking Zub in the head, but all Perron knew is that his captain was lying face-down on the ice and someone had to pay.
Perron's punishment for the retaliation pushed him over 800 career penalty minutes, and into another exclusive group. He is one of only eight active players with 700-plus points -- he’s at 752 -- and 800-plus penalty minutes. The others might all wind up in the Hall of Fame (ordered by points): Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Brad Marchand, Corey Perry, Jamie Benn, Brent Burns.
And to think, "There was a time in my career where it could have been over,” said Perron. “2015, 2016-ish in Pittsburgh it didn’t go so well, and here we are eight years later and still playing. So I want to keep playing.”
Perron was 26 when he was traded to the Penguins (along with first-team All-Name nominee Rob ‘The Colonel’ Klinkhammer) for a first-round pick midway through the 2014-15 season. For whatever reason, things just didn’t click for him over parts of two seasons in Pittsburgh: 38 points and a minus-21 in 86 games. He was traded to the Ducks, where he rediscovered his offensive touch before signing back in St. Louis that offseason. He’s been humming along ever since.
“I wasn’t sure after (Pittsburgh) where my career would go,” said Perron. “Going to Anaheim really helped me find a role and knowing that through my attributes -- what I have, what I don’t have -- I can find a way to be a positive player there, and I’m glad that it’s still working right now.”
It’s selling Perron short to simply call him a pest. The first thing Kane says about him is that “he’s obviously a skilled player.” Specifically, he’s one of the craftier puck-handlers in the NHL. His patience allows him to find seams that others might miss. The game slows down when the puck finds Perron, who will just as soon go find it himself. To Kane, “one of his best attributes is being able to win pucks back,” which goes an especially long way in the playoffs. And he’s an asset for a coach in his ability to move up and down the lineup.
Derek Lalonde raves about Perron’s “hockey sense and deception.” He says that “his ability to protect the puck is as good as it’s going to get.” Perron’s hands are evident anytime he plucks a puck off the wall and quickly makes a play, like when he fed Joe Veleno on a give-and-go to help set up the Wings’ first goal in last week’s rout of the Caps. He’s also third on the team in power play goals (6) and fifth in power play points (13) on a unit that’s propelled Detroit for most of the season.
“He brings a lot to the table,” said Kane, including the ability to set it.
Perron’s game has grown with age. He had 332 points over his first eight seasons, compared to 420 over his last eight. He said that “getting on the half-wall on the power play” in his most recent stint with the Blues “really took my game to another level. It made me feel the puck a lot more and make plays using that one-timer.” When he was relocated to a net-front role earlier this season with the Wings, Perron admits he didn’t love it – “touching the puck a little bit less, it does affect your five-on-five (play),” he said – but I do what the team requires of me.” Lalonde appreciates the fact that Perron is a “butt-heads-type personality.”
“It’s not all rosy. We’ve had some tough conversations, but the pro he is, he responds extremely well,” said Lalonde. “He’s kind of a throwback in that today’s athlete, they want some feedback, but it’s different. David’s old-school where you can look him in the eyes, you can be hard on him, you can be clear with your expectations and he’ll accept it and move on. I’ve really liked our relationship in what we’re trying to build here. We’re trying to take some steps as a team and an organization, and he’s been a big part of it.”
In playing with an edge, Perron provides a spark. In speaking up when he feels he needs to, he can light a fire in his teammates. When the Red Wings were slipping out the playoff race on the heels of a brutal December, Perron stood up in the locker room after they kicked off January with a win and challenged the group to bank 20 points that month. Detroit did exactly that. Few players in the room have benefited from Perron’s presence as much as Larkin, who prefers to lead quietly be example.
“Even when he doesn’t have it, and you know because he’s not as loud as in the locker room that he’s a little tired or sick, whatever may be going on, he still brings it. He brings whatever he has, and I respect the heck out of that,” Larkin said. “Someone that has been really great for me in this locker room. We’re completely different people, but he’s vocal, he’s on guys at the right times, he’s able to hold people accountable because he holds himself accountable. A good leader and a good person.”
For Perron, “that’s what I love about hockey.”
“Any given night, you don’t have to play your best or feel your best, but you can still have an impact,” he said. “Maybe you don’t have your legs as much that night, you go to the net more, you’re a little more chippy, more physical. You balance all that in your head all the time. Versus maybe a sprinter that’s running the 100-meter, there’s only one way to go about it. In hockey, there’s many ways. That’s really what I love, and I want to try and keep making a difference even more in the room as we go here.”
Had the Red Wings’ slide continued into January, Perron would have been a rental to sell at the deadline. Now, with Detroit holding the third best record (16-6-2) in the NHL since the New Year and a four-point cushion on a playoff spot, he’s a candidate for an extension. He has strengthened the team’s mettle and stiffened its spine. During one of many scrums in the Wings’ loss to the Panthers last week, a referee had to wedge himself head-first between Perron and Sam Bennett to separate the two along the glass. They might meet again in the playoffs.
The Red Wings still aren’t as heavy as they’d like to be, but Perron’s bite has spread through his teammates. They are tougher as a team than they were last season. Walman, who arrived in Detroit three years ago, said the group has been “trying to get bad habits out that were here … and (Perron) has built that knowledge in how you drag guys into the fight.”
“He has that knack for getting guys going and wanting to compete,” said Walman. “He’s really brought the best out of us.”
“He’s known for his points, but I think he’s known to be a playoff player and you can definitely see that ever since he signed with us,” said Seider. "I think that’s also something that our young guys, including myself, look up to and we see on a daily basis. You go out there and you’re like, ‘OK, I gotta do the same thing.’”
“That attribute or mindset of how hard he competes, that’s almost something you can’t teach,” said Petry, a 14-year vet himself. “And it’s so important in this league to have that.”
It’s passion that has propelled Perron for 17 years in the NHL, and counting. No one lasts that long without loving the game. Kane compares him to another French-Canadian vet in goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, Kane’s teammate for a season in Chicago, “always laughing, always in a good mood, always trying to have fun.” Chiarot, an 11-year vet, said that “the energy he brings every single day is probably the most I’ve seen out of a guy in my career.”
“He wakes up and basically sprints to the rink,” said Chiarot. “He just loves the whole package of being a hockey player, loves the plane rides, the bus rides, being with the guys, practicing, games, he loves it all. He’s a big voice in the room.”
“He’s such a good teammate, I think that’s the biggest thing for me,” said Walman. “Even when I was in St. Louis, being a young guy and maybe not even playing, I’ve just always loved being around him.”
“How much he wants to win every night, you never really know if that comes and goes as you get older, how much you really care,” said Kane. “But you can tell he’s invested every day, every game.”
All this praise might make Perron uncomfortable. In his mind, these are the givens of playing professional hockey. He’s made some $50 million in the NHL without ever being the fastest or biggest or most gifted player on his team: Why wouldn’t he love the game? He’s one of the most popular players on his current team, which is better for his presence as it aims to return to the playoffs.
“I take a lot of pride in this,” said David Perron, a done-it-before veteran trying to do it again, driven by skill, will and a little instinct to kill.