Corey Perry's Stanley Cup Final Appearance with Oilers Brings Flashbacks of Canadiens' 2021 Run

"In the big moments, he just gets bigger." Corey Perry won a Stanley Cup early in his career, and he's had many chances to win again. This 2021 Archive story spotlighted Perry with the Montreal Canadiens.

Veteran NHL forward Corey Perry is currently battling for a Stanley Cup with the Edmonton Oilers. In this feature story from The Hockey News’ June 11, 2021, edition (Volume 74, Issue 7), senior writer Ken Campbell put together an analysis of Perry’s career as a prickly star who never lost his desire to keep winning.

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Perry was with the Montreal Canadiens when Campbell’s story was published, and he helped get the Habs to the 2021 Cup final. He has not succeeded in earning the second Cup of his 20-year NHL career, but his reputation as a high-stakes difference-maker is what keeps NHL teams coming back to him.

“I’m a big Corey Perry fan,” said Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill, who signed Perry for one season after his single season with the Canadiens. “He plays the game the right way, and it’s just about winning. He’s never been the fastest guy, and, while he has skill, he’s never been the most skilled guy, but he finds a way to do it. And when the train goes off the tracks, he’s the guy who says, ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK. We’re going to get back on the tracks, and this is how we’re going to do it.’ And then he goes out and does it. In the big moments, he just gets bigger.”

Now 39 years old, Perry may not get a better chance to win another Cup than the one he has now with the Oilers. Winning a Cup so early in his career, then coming so close again numerous times has kept Perry hungry for success. He’s got precious little time left in hockey’s top league, and he no longer takes these kind of opportunities as if they were going to happen each and every year.

“I took that for granted,” Perry told Hockey Night in Canada’s broadcast in 2021. “When you’re that young in your career and things come so quick…This is the hardest (trophy) to win and there are a lot of guys out there, and hopefully they get that chance.”

Vol. 74, No. 7, June 11, 2021

By Ken Campbell

If you talk to people in the real-estate business long enough, they can make a woodshed at the side of an expressway sound like the Chateau de Versailles. But you have to watch for those potentially misleading catchwords, because King Louis the 14th almost always let things slide. “Cozy” often means it’s large enough to house you or your pet, but not both. “Grandma’s house” translates into it’s really old and actually smells like grandma. “Unique decor” tells you there’s felt wallpaper on the bannisters. If it’s “airy,” look for cracks in the foundation. And “it’ll go fast” could mean anything from it will sell quickly to it’s situated on a sinkhole.

It is indeed a case of buyer beware, just as it is in the annual flea market known as NHL free agency. So, when a then-35-year-old Corey Perry went on the open market after the season ended last summer, we can only assume that GMs around the league looked at him the same way a wary purchaser would regard a “quaint cottage.” After all, Perry was a “vintage player” and “a throwback.” His “veteran presence” and “winning pedigree” more than made up for his “methodical skating.” He was definitely a “motivated seller” who was “move-in ready.” How else do you explain the fact that, after all Perry has accomplished in his career, the only fit he could find was a one-year deal with the Montreal Canadiens for the NHL’s equivalent of minimum wage?

Well, you can credit Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin for reading the market and making an unbelievably astute signing. It wasn’t as though Perry had no options, but he wanted to go to a place where he had a chance to win, and once Bergevin signed Tyler Toffoli, traded for and signed Josh Anderson, then picked up defenseman Joel Edmundson and backup goalie Jake Allen, Perry was convinced Montreal was where he wanted to be. “Great acquisition for sure,” said Canadiens coach Dominique Ducharme. “Marc did a great job bringing him in. When the time comes and the games become more important, you see him raising his game. He always found a way in key moments to make a big play or get a big goal.”

Signing for the league minimum was a first for Perry, who until this season had accumulated almost $86 million in career earnings (so we know he isn’t playing for the money). Just as it was a first when he found himself on the sidelines to start the season, as part of Montreal’s taxi squad. That required the Canadiens to waive him through the league and two teams were prepared to put a claim in on him before Perry’s agent kindly asked them to respect his desire to stick it out with Montreal. “I remember him asking me what waivers were,” Pat Morris said. “He told me, ‘Explain this to me because I’ve never been on waivers before.’”

It’s fairly safe to assume that in 2021-22, Perry will not find himself scrambling to find work less than two weeks before the opening of training camp, the way he did this season. Not after the way he was contributing to the Canadiens through the first two rounds of the NHL playoffs. When Montreal went down 3-1 to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round, both Perry and fellow veteran Eric Staal had some impactful, heartfelt words for their teammates, who went out and not only won their next seven games but did not trail for a single second in any of them.

This comes as no surprise to Jim Nill. The GM of the Dallas Stars watched last year through the playoffs as Perry refused to let the team lose. After scoring just five goals in the regular season, the lowest total of his career, he matched that total in the playoffs and was a key contributor to the injury-ravaged Stars as they came two wins away from the Stanley Cup. “I’m a big Corey Perry fan,” Nill said. “And I have been even going back to his junior days. He plays the game the right way, and it’s just about winning. He’s never been the fastest guy, and, while he has skill, he’s never been the most skilled guy, but he finds a way to do it. And when the train goes off the tracks, he’s the guy who says, ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK. We’re going to get back on the tracks, and this is how we’re going to do it.’ And then he goes out and does it. In the big moments, he just gets bigger.”

And his teams win. If it’s true that winning follows Perry around, it’s because he drags his teams into the battle. It has always been that way, and that’s why Perry is one of the most decorated NHL players this side of Scott Niedermayer, with whom he won the Stanley Cup as a member of the Anaheim Ducks in 2007. As one of only 29 members of the Triple Gold Club (Stanley Cup, Olympic gold medal, World Championship gold), Perry’s winning ways go back to long before he became an NHLer. In 2004-05, three years after the OHL’s London Knights drafted a 5-foot-9, 140-pound right winger out of the Peterborough minor hockey system, Perry led the team to the Memorial Cup. That was the same year he captured a gold medal with Canada’s world-junior team. Throw in a World Cup and you’ve got almost everything covered.

But it began even before that, right around the time Constable Geoff Perry of the Ontario Provincial Police decided it was time to move his family back to his hometown after eight years in New Liskeard, Ont. Geoff knew the hockey in Peterborough would be better and he was right. His son became the backbone of the Peterborough Jr. Petes, a small-town team that became a big juggernaut. The Petes won AAA all-Ontario championships at the under-10 and under-13 levels before capturing the OHL Cup as an under-15 team. In eight games in the tournament, Perry led all players in scoring with nine goals and 20 points, two more than Anthony Stewart and eight more than future NHLers Brent Burns, Tyler Kennedy, Dan Carcillo and Paul Bissonnette had combined.

In the final, with his team trailing 2-0 in the third, Perry created a turnover on the penalty kill and dished to linemate Cory Vitarelli for a goal that started the comeback. “It’s almost like he’s got a bit of magic,” Vitarelli said. “A magic touch.” And Vitarelli should know something about that. A teacher in Peterborough, Vitarelli is also a veteran of the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League who finds himself at the same point of his career that Perry does now in the NHL. And like Perry, Vitarelli has done his fair share of winning. He played four years in the OHL for the St. Michael’s Majors, three of them against Perry, won a Minto Cup junior lacrosse championship with Peterborough in 2006 and three Mann Cups, emblematic of men’s lacrosse supremacy in Canada, and played Canadian university hockey for five years.

Mark Vitarelli, Cory’s father, coached both his son and Perry all the way through youth hockey and put them on a line where Perry played the right side, Vitarelli was center and Mike Moher, who played briefly in the OHL with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and Ottawa 67’s, was the left winger. And the three of them apparently had a pretty high opinion of themselves. 

“We called ourselves the ‘MVP Line,’” Vitarelli said. “Moher, Vitarelli and Perry.” Mark Vitarelli also remembers Perry as a force of nature right from the beginning. Those Peterborough teams won a lot, which put something of a target on their backs. And the Corey Perry you see taking liberties and wreaking havoc in the NHL played the same way in youth hockey. “He’d turn the stick over all the time,” Mark Vitarelli said. “They’d come after him. Everybody we played would take runs at him. But Corey would initiate it, too. He’d turn the stick over and give somebody a tap to start the process.”

Perry’s hockey roots run deep. His grandmother, Dorothy, would billet Peterborough Petes players, and they’d often have card games going at the kitchen table while Corey and his younger brother, A.J., played mini-sticks in a hallway nearby. Perry’s uncle, Greg, was well-known at the Peterborough Memorial Centre for his booming voice, which was regularly used to critique both the Petes and their opponents, and perhaps sometimes referees. At one point, players and staff nicknamed him ‘Old Leather Lungs.’ 

Convinced his sons needed a better caliber of hockey, Geoff Perry applied for a transfer to Peterborough and got it. Actually, it’s a little ironic, given Corey’s reputation for playing on the fringes of the rulebook, that both Perry’s father and grandfather forged careers in law enforcement. The son of a police officer and a bank teller, Corey certainly was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with most of the disposable income going toward keeping the two boys in elite hockey. “We pretty much lived from cheque to cheque,” Geoff said.

That obviously is not a problem for Corey Perry now. According to capfriendly.com, only 27 players in NHL history have higher career earnings than Perry, with Steven Stamkos, Phil Kessel and teammate Carey Price set to overtake him next season. The next one ahead of him on the list is Staal, another veteran who will become a UFA after the season. In fact, the Canadiens’ so-called fourth line of Staal between Joel Armia and Perry is made up entirely of pending UFAs.

There’s no chance Perry will not play next season, and perhaps the season after that and the one after that. In fact, Morris thinks Perry is one of those players who was born to play hockey and likely will do so at the NHL level until all 32 teams refuse to offer him a contract. Perhaps he spends the latter part of his career going from contender to contender on a series of one-year deals. Perhaps Bergevin and the Habs try to keep him around for a couple of years. It’s a delicate balancing act because Perry is 36, and, to this point, Father Time is undefeated. With a player like Perry, the drop-off in skills is rarely gradual, which means it might not end particularly well, but for now we see a player with an edge and an ability to elevate his game.

After Game 1 of the first-round series against Toronto, Perry began using one of Anderson’s sticks and scored three goals and six points in the next 10 games. Nothing is guaranteed at this point for Perry, whose passion to play is just as strong, perhaps even stronger, than it was when he won a Cup with Anaheim in 2007. “I took that for granted,” he told Hockey Night in Canada during Round 2. “When you’re that young in your career and things come so quick…This is the hardest (trophy) to win and there are a lot of guys out there, and hopefully they get that chance.”

During the Canadiens’ playoff run, Perry got a call from his mother, Nancy, who wanted to know where he was going to be playing next season because she’s eager to see him on the ice after not being in attendance for a game since November 2019. Sometimes it’s important that Nancy is at the game. In April 2011, she made an impromptu trip to Anaheim to watch Corey play, and while she was there, he got a hat trick that gave him 50 goals on the season. That clinched the Rocket Richard Trophy and, likely, the Hart Trophy as league MVP. (And possibly secured his spot in the Hall of Fame. Of the Hart winners that are retired, only three have not been inducted.) “He said, ‘I don’t know where I’ll be next year, but I’ll be somewhere, Mom,’” Geoff said. “He’ll do what he has to do.”

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