Posted yesterday at 2:15 p.m.
He has nothing against the Detroit Red Wings, his new team. But David Perron was far from happy to leave St. Louis.
It’s not like his relationship with the Blues has been smooth sailing over the past 15 years.
In 2013, the team that drafted him six years earlier traded him to the Edmonton Oilers. After returning to Missouri in 2016, the Quebecer was left unprotected in the 2017 expansion draft; he ended up in Las Vegas. A year later, he returned to the Blues, this time for four full years.
A few weeks ago, Perron received the news he had hoped to never receive again: his third stay in St. Louis was over. At 34, he can probably assume that this time the divorce will be final. Much to his dismay.
“I spent 11 of my 15 seasons there, my children grew up there. We loved that. It’s difficult,” Perron said last Tuesday on the sidelines of the Pro-Am Gagné-Bergeron, a charity event presented at the Videotron Center in Quebec City.
With an offensive production equivalent to 72 points per 82 games for 4 years, he believes that he “deserved” a new contract which would have allowed him not to move. It didn’t happen.
Almost a month later, he says he is ready to “turn the page” and begin a new chapter in his career in Detroit, a city where he will settle with a two-year contract in his pocket. This challenge thrills him, he says. Especially when the Red Wings seem to finally get their heads above water.
Over the past six seasons, the Wings have hovered between 31e and the 25e rank in the general classification. Some of the club’s most promising prospects, Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond in the lead, established themselves full-time in the NHL last season, which seems to have convinced general manager Steve Yzerman to step on the accelerator this offseason. .
In addition to Perron, forwards Andrew Copp and Dominik Kubalik as well as defenders Ben Chiarot, Mark Pysyk and Olli Maatta have all been hired on the free agent market. Goalkeeper Ville Husso was acquired in a trade.
Yzerman, says Perron, sold him the idea of a team “at the end of reconstruction”, which wants to “play important matches” until the very end of the season. And no longer be excluded from the portrait of the playoffs before the Holidays. With enthusiasm, the Quebecer is already talking about the second year of his contract, when the young workforce will have matured further.
New role
Although he never wore a letter to his jersey in St. Louis, David Perron knows he was one of the sages of the group. He found himself among the “five or six players” that coaches consulted to get the pulse of the locker room.
In Detroit, he will no longer be a veteran among many others. He will literally be the dean. He therefore expects to play “a leadership role”, which already fills him with “pride”.
Arrived in the NHL at 19, Perron was, “for a few seasons, the youngest guy in the room”. At the Blues, he remembers the influence Keith Tkachuk had over him – “he was tough on me, but he was fair”. The Sherbrooke resident knows full well that the “approach” to adopt with young players is different today. He does not intend to study the formation before the start of training camp, preferring “to give everyone the chance to make a good first impression”.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
David Perron
He sees himself above all as a unifier. On the road, he intends to snatch the players from their video game console and force them out of the hotel, together. And this, in order to create “a team spirit” as quickly as possible.
Perron remembers the first version of the Vegas Golden Knights, in 2017-2018. “Building an identity” had been a priority. Obviously, it paid off since the Knights, without any stars except Marc-André Fleury in net, reached the Stanley Cup final. Coincidence or not: Perron wore an “A” that year.
I’m not trying to say it will be the Detroit Golden Knights, but we have several good pieces in place to have a winning team.
David Perron
Several times, he talks about the “culture” that exists among the Red Wings. The one that Yzerman wanted to implement on his return from Tampa Bay and which is perceptible even in the upper echelons of the organization. Niklas Lidstrom, Niklas Kronwall, Kirk Maltby, Kris Draper, Jiri Fischer and Dan Cleary all won the Stanley Cup in the red and white uniform and are part of the club’s management today. It is Perron himself who draws up the list.
“They’ve been part of successful teams; they were the older guys, the leaders. I want to try to be that player,” he concludes.
Perhaps, in the end, he has done more homework on his new team than he admits…