TAMPA, Fla. — Ryan Getzlaf perked up a little when the Maple Leafs started to run away with Game 2 against the Lightning.
“As soon as the score started to get out of hand, I started paying closer attention,” the retired Ducks captain said, with a hint of laughter, “because I knew what was coming.”
It was time to get out the popcorn and watch his old pal Corey Perry do Corey Perry things.
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In the case of this Game 2, that included the Lightning winger scoring a beauty goal and dropping the gloves with Leafs defenseman Justin Holl.
Never a dull moment.
“He’s just not built to go down without a fight or without some antics,” chuckled Getzlaf, Perry’s teammate for 14 years in Anaheim. “I knew he was going to get involved at some point.”
Um, yeah. Bank on it.
Perry has had plenty of moments already in the first-round series, which the Lightning trail 2-1 heading into Monday night’s Game 4. He’s put up a team-high five points, is tied for the team high with two goals, has dropped the gloves, has drawn three Leaf penalties, and Saturday night, addressed the entire Toronto bench after a wild melee that began when Morgan Rielly finished a check on Brayden Point into the end boards.
In short, Perry has been in the middle of everything.
“Yeah, that’s extremely shocking,” Getzlaf said with a chuckle.
The playoffs are Perry’s time.
“This is why we play,” Perry told The Athletic on Saturday before his team’s 4-3 overtime loss in Game 3. “As soon as the calendar month turns to April, the playoffs come around, there’s just a different feel in the air. That’s how I explain it. It’s a different smell. Everything is a little different. This is the time I like to play and be at my best.”
His 193 career playoff games are tops among active NHL players, and Monday he will tie Paul Coffey for 24th all-time in that category. Of course, he’s played 72 of those games in the past three years, reaching the Cup Final with Dallas, Montreal and Tampa Bay.
It’s a crazy, late-career playoff journey that began after being forced out of Anaheim in June 2019 when the Ducks made the difficult decision to buy him out of the final two years of his eight-year, $69 million contract.
Imagine how it felt for a former Hart Trophy winner, Stanley Cup champion and heart-and-soul Ducks player to get bought out. And yet …
“I believe what happened to him was good for him,” said Getzlaf, who texted Perry before the playoffs to wish him good luck. “It kind of gave him a renewed sense of urgency and pride in himself. Anytime you get bought out as a player, it probably gives you a spark to prove somebody else wrong — that they made the wrong choice. And gave him a renewed passion for the game. He was able to go on, and he’s chasing the Cup since then.
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“The buyout sucked, but at that point in his career, it was ultimately the right thing for him because he wasn’t an $8 million player anymore. But to go out and grab him at $1 million or $2 million and watch him compete in the playoffs and do what he does, it’s a great spot for him.”
Truth, Perry said.
“It was a business decision in Anaheim, and those things happen,” Perry said. “But it did give me a little lift, a little fire under my ass. Because you never want to be the guy that gets bought out. You do take it personally.
“It lit a fire under me. I just continued to push and put my head down. It’s been a great couple of years since then, obviously, without the end goal that I wanted or that the teams I played on wanted. But personally, it’s given me that extra life.”
Given his playoff contributions, he’s been an absolute bargain, too, signing for one year, $1.5 million (plus bonuses) in Dallas in 2019-20 — when Toronto was among the teams interested — then one year, $750,000 in Montreal in 2020-21 and two years at a $1 million cap hit with Tampa Bay in the summer of ’21.
Worth every penny for 17 goals and 35 points in the playoffs since the buyout, plus every other facet of the game he brings at this time of year.
“It doesn’t surprise me with him,” former Kings rival Dustin Brown told The Athletic when asked about Perry still doing what he’s doing a month away from turning 38. “The player that he is really shines at playoff time.”
Brown and Perry faced each other in a very entertaining seven-game series between the Kings and Ducks in 2014 and obviously also countless times over the years in the regular season.
“I always enjoyed watching him play because of his antics,” Brown said. “I have a memory of him in that playoff series. Jeff Carter put his gloves up on the dasher, I think during a TV timeout, and Perry filled them up with water in the middle of the second period. Just stuff like that is what I think about when I think of Perry.”
Brown played on the edge, too, so it’s no surprise he admires Perry.
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“I think the thing that gets lost about a player like Corey is that everyone talks about him and the stuff he’s doing on the ice, but I’ve played against players similar in nature except that’s all they do,” Brown said. “You can ignore a player like that. But when you have a player that scores a big goal or makes a big play, his teams thrive off of that. Because he contributes in multiple different ways.
“I always find that the guy you hate the most are the guys that can hurt you on the scoreboard and annoy the hell out of you. He’s one of them.”
Talk about respect from a former foe. And it’s mutual.
“Especially coming from a guy like that,” Perry said. “He did play on the edge. He had some things where he might have crossed (the line), but at the same time, he was the same type of player. It’s how you want to play. It’s how I have to play to be effective. It’s what I’ve done since junior all the way through. You play hard, put your nose down, and sometimes you get rewarded.”
It annoys the heck out of the opposition, of course. So one can only imagine how it felt for Perry to walk into that Tampa Bay dressing room for the first time following two Cup Final battles on the opposing team.
Perry grinned.
“When I came in here, obviously there’s a learning curve, and just trying to get to know everybody,” he said. “They obviously know who I am on the ice, playing against them the last two finals before I got here. But they accepted me with open arms. We gave each other a few jabs back and forth when I got here. Other than that, it was all laughs and smiles. You just put that behind you because these are your new brothers. This is who you’re going to go to war with.”
Veteran Lightning forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare summed it up best.
“I mean, I didn’t like him before I came into this team,” he said. “You have to be honest. He’s a tough player to play against. He’s the kind of guy that you don’t want to play against, but you love to have him on your team. He’s going to be in your face. He’s going to be in the face of your goalie. He’s going to make the difficult decisions. He’s going to take some bad penalties at times. But at the end of the day, it’s always going to be for the sake of the team.
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“A true battling game for the team. That’s what you want.”
Veteran Bolts blueliner Zach Bogosian echoed the hatred of playing against Perry, pointing out the goal-crease battles. He also immediately loved Perry as a teammate.
“There’s only one Corey Perry,” Bogosian said. “Him as a player, that speaks for itself, but just him as a person and a teammate, he’s one of one. I’ve never been around anyone like him, and I don’t think I’ll ever meet someone like him.”
At this point, Bogosian burst out laughing, the way a person laughs when he can’t tell you a story that he really wishes he could. It was a hearty laugh.
“He’s great,” continued Bogosian. “No one in this room knows about what it’s like to go to war, but I would imagine that if there was a guy you wanted in your foxhole, it’s him.
“He’s a great teammate, he’s a great leader, he’s a great player, he’s obviously had a hell of a career up to this point, and we’re just super lucky to have him.”
The Maple Leafs have had the, ahem, wonderful experience of matching up with Perry in a third consecutive opening-round playoff series, dating back to the Habs upsetting the Leafs in ’21.
“The first year with Montreal was a little different, with no fans, but you’re still getting all the media attention. You still hear about it from everywhere, being from Ontario,” smiled Perry on facing the Leafs three consecutive years in the playoffs. “It’s exciting. It’s what it’s all about. It’s creating rivalries. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Fun unless you’re a Leafs player.
Consider, this series alone, not only Perry’s two goals but the three penalties he’s drawn. In Game 1, it was a high sticking on Jake McCabe and a slashing on David Kampf. In Game 2, a roughing on McCabe, not to mention getting Holl to drop the gloves in a fight that I very much doubt the Leafs defender wanted any part of late in a blowout win.
Corey Perry (Claus Andersen / Getty Images)
“Yeah, he’s been an effective player and our job is to play him hard and play him smart,” McCabe said Friday. “He had a couple of goals the first couple of games, so obviously he’s been a factor.”
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Added Leafs veteran Mark Giordano: “We’ve got to make him more uncomfortable. He’s a guy who obviously lives around the net and makes plays around the net, but we have to play him a lot harder.”
And especially for the Leafs, stay disciplined.
“We talk about that all the time — about after the whistle and how you can’t give this team free power plays,” Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “Perry in particular has the ability to kind of raise the temperature and through his whole career has found a way to get those calls to go in his favor. And he’s good as anybody in the league at it.
“That he can stoke the fire and yet come out of it on his side somewhat unscathed. But yeah, with him in particular, we’ve got to really toe that line.”
Easier said than done, of course. Perry has a way of making the opposing players’ blood boil.
Which is why he has taken a few punches to the head over the years. What’s different nowadays is that Perry has a 5-year-old, hockey-crazy son, named Griffin, watching dad play. And waiting for dad to get home to chat about the game.
“There’s some funny conversations,” laughed Perry. “When I get home, he’s asking me questions. ‘Why did you fight?’ Or ‘Why did he punch you?’”
Which, well, are fair questions!
“They are fair questions. I say, ‘You know what, dude, it’s part of the game and it happens. But don’t do it!” laughed Perry.
Because it turns out the apple maybe doesn’t fall far from the tree? We’re talking about young Griffin the hockey player.
“He’s got that little feistiness in him, and I tell him he’s got to calm it down a little,” chuckled Perry. “But it’s all in good fun. He loves the game. He loves being around the rink. Whenever I can, I bring him in the dressing room here. It’s a lot of fun.”
And sure enough, there was Griffin before Saturday’s game, skating out on the ice at Amalie Arena as the “Thunder Kid” for the evening, getting to take part in pregame festivities including standing with the Lightning starting lineup during the anthems.
So darn cute.
And who knows how old Griffin will be by the time his old man finally calls it quits?
“I’ve always said, I’ll keep playing if they keep inviting me back,” Perry said.
His passion for the game remains.
“Ultimately I still think winning is the No. 1 thing that drives him,” Getzlaf said. “His mentality, his compete level, still always has come from a place proving himself and proving people wrong. When he was younger, a lot of people told him he couldn’t skate well enough — stuff that I’m sure is still pushing him to this day.
“But I think, again, ultimately he enjoys being out there. He loves to be competing. And he’ll do it until they ask him not to.”
Perry doesn’t take a single day in the NHL for granted.
“I love the game,” Perry said. “I love the day-to-day stuff. Being around the guys and laughing, being on the airplane and joking around.”
And well, spring hockey.
“As soon as the playoffs come, that’s why I play the game.”
He’s an absolute beauty, that’s what Corey Perry is. They don’t make them like him anymore.
Cherish every playoff game we have left with him, hockey fans.
Well, hockey fans outside of Toronto.
(Top photo: Mark LoMoglio / NHLI via Getty Images)