Two seasons ago, the Senators crushed Detroit on back-to-back nights, leading Perron and his Red Wing teammates to think Ottawa had finally arrived.

The Ottawa Senators' 2023-24 season will probably best be remembered as the season everything changed. A new owner came in and removed the long-time GM and his head coach.

But the season will also be remembered as a year of disappointment. 

In 2022-23, the Senators finished six points out of a playoff spot, and everyone expected them to take the next step last season. The Detroit Red Wings certainly felt that way. In February of 2023, the Senators pounded the Wings on back-to-back nights by a combined score of 12-3 (6-2; 6-1). After that, GM Steve Yzerman quickly went into seller mode at the deadline that season.

New Sens winger David Perron, who spent the past two seasons with Detroit, remembers those beatdowns and was surprised the Sens seemed to take a step back last season.

"When we played Ottawa, those two games back to back two years ago, we just thought it felt like Ottawa finally took that step, and now they're not going to look back," Perron said Thursday on the Coming in Hot Podcast. 

"But they did seem to take a step back last year. I mentioned that to a couple of guys. And I hope that it hurt the guys a little bit. I heard it made them even more hungry coming into this year to really just move past that. Maybe it was a one-off year, whatever it was, and finally moving the program forward for good. I want to be part of that. I want to help the culture in that regard, the identity."

Speaking of hurting the guys a little bit, Perron also addressed the crosscheck last season on Artem Zub, now his teammate. Host Jason York asked if the story might actually make it easier for Perron to come into a new locker room, have a few laughs about it, and move on.

"I think you're right that way," Perron said. "Hockey guys, we're a different breed in the sense that we can just move on really quickly. I mean, it happens. Maybe not that aggressive of a behaviour. But it happens in practice where there are fights and things like that, and guys go for lunch or beers.

"But people are talking about it for days in the media even though guys in the locker room were literally just laughing about it. People can't believe that it's actually what's happening. And it does happen quite often.

Perron said he reached out the next day to a former Red Wing teammate from two seasons ago who was now in Ottawa (Dominik Kubalik). He was happy to get the report that Zub was not injured.

"I think on a personal level, I missed enough games with head injuries and concussions that you never want to see anyone go through something like that. And I'm not going to try and explain how I reacted anymore, I guess, but it's not one of my proudest moments in the sense of the way the result happened."