Oilers benefit from Perry’s savvy veteran play, EBUG ‘proud’ to suit up

Tyler Palmer of the U of A Golden Bears got tapped to be the Oilers backup goalie on Monday. Nahreman Issa reports.

Corey Perry has successfully adjusted his game in his National Hockey League twilight years.

You could say that about most NHL players who approach, or is, age 40.

There aren’t many of them toiling at the highest level of professional hockey – just six – but each name is practically a lock for Hockey Hall of Fame recognition.

Marc-Andre Fleury, 40. Ryan Suter, also 40. Alex Ovechkin, Brent Burns and Jonathan Quick, all 39.

And 39-year-old Perry – a former 50-goal scorer, Stanley Cup champion and NHL most-valuable player who acquired the nicknames Scorey Perry and The Worm while starring for the powerhouse Anaheim Ducks for 14 seasons, later suiting up for the Dallas Stars, Montreal Canadiens, Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks.

It’s his ‘Worm’ qualities that really stand out today for the Edmonton Oilers.

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Today, in his 20th NHL campaign, he’s playing fewer minutes than he would’ve in his prime years on a line with fellow Ducks star Ryan Getzlaf, but he’s just as smart – and wiser, of course – in a complimentary Oilers role.

Head coach Kris Knoblauch described the veteran of 1,340 NHL games – one of four players left in the league from the 2003 draft (along with Suter, Fleury and Burns) – as a “very smart hockey player.”

“I’m not saying other older players aren’t smart, but he’s been able to adjust, (and) also his style of game doesn’t rely on speed,” Knoblauch said Monday after the Oilers beat the visiting Kraken 4-2, the winning goal coming on a Perry breakaway in the second period courtesy a beautiful saucer pass from Darnell Nurse.

“Where other players are expected to skate the puck in, entries, that part of it, his game has always been centered around just being really smart.”

Perry, who has scored nine goals and eight assists for 17 points in 49 games played, has three points in the last four games, including two goals.

“I feel great,” he said following the game, in which he lined up five-on-five on the fourth line alongside Noah Philp and Kasperi Kapanen. “I feel like I’m seeing well and getting some bounces, and it helps when you’re winning, too – a little confidence – so it’s been good that way.”

It’s more than Perry being able to provide secondary scoring, though. It’s the so-called game within the game in which The Worm shines brightest.

His performance in last week’s Oilers rematch on home ice with the Vancouver Canucks – with the atmosphere charged on the heels of a suspension to Oilers superstar Connor McDavid – was a testament to that.

Perry not only threw the Canucks, who’d beaten the Oilers five nights before in B.C., off their game by manhandling/piledriving their captain Quinn Hughes during a second-period multi-player scrum, he took the wind out of their sails by drawing a penalty on Teddy Blueger early in the third to negate any sort of Vancouver comeback attempt in the eventual 6-2 Edmonton win.

TSN’s Ryan Rishaug, commenting on the Oilers-Canucks tilt on the Got Yer Back podcast, highlighted Perry’s game-managing antics right off the top.

“I just thought on a night that was so emotionally charged, it was actually a guy (Perry) showing composure that swung it in a really important moment,” Rishaug said of Perry goading Blueger into dropping his gloves to fight and taking a roughing penalty to negate an impending call penalty against the Oilers.

“He got under their skin,” Knoblauch said after that game. “They’re looking for a fight, and the timing was perfect for us. Instead of being shorthanded, we play four-on-four, and if they do score, it might be a different game.”

Oilers star Leon Draisaitl said post-game that Perry is “probably the best in the league at it.”

“He knows when to do what at the right times,” Draisaitl said. “That’s just a mature, really smart hockey play. I know it has nothing to do with hockey, but ...”

And beyond his ‘Worm’-like abilities, Perry’s leadership in the dressing room is a big plus, Knoblauch said Monday.

“That’s definitely one thing when the team is kind of going off the rails about how we’re supposed to play,” he said. “If we’re taking shortcuts, the coach can call guys out, but here’s a veteran who’s played many hockey games and many big games, so when he calls out players, that’s very powerful, and that’s something that he will do and (is) a little bit of an extension of the coaching staff.”

EBUG excitement

Suiting up for an NHL game was a dream come true for a local university goalie.

With Oilers starting netminder Stuart Skinner and his wife Chloe expecting the birth of their second child on Monday, the NHL team signed Tyler Palmer to an amateur tryout contract in order to have the member of the University of Alberta Golden Bears serve as backup to Calvin Pickard against the Kraken.

Palmer was unavailable to comment Tuesday on his experience, but his mother Shari Palmer told CTV News Edmonton her 21-year-old son was excited to get the chance to be a part of an NHL team for a game.

“Tyler doesn’t FaceTime me very often – it’s usually me who’s initiating,” recalled Palmer, who wasn’t able to make it to Edmonton from her Fernie, B.C., home in time to see her son wearing Oilers colours.

“I picked it up ... and he’s like, ‘I’m going up (to the pros), mom.’ He was pretty proud.”

Palmer, a junior Western Hockey League graduate who played for both the Victoria Royals and Everett Silvertips, joined the Golden Bears this season. He attended Kraken training camp in 2023.

Skinner was at Oilers practice Tuesday following the birth of boy Darcy Daniel Skinner.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nahreman Issa