On May 16, 1985, Corey Perry was born in New Liskeard, Ontario, Canada to a law enforcement officer. He is the first of two sons for his father. Perry is a professional ice hockey player for Tampa Bay Lightning in the National Hockey League (NHL). Perry began his NHL career with the Anaheim Ducks, where he spent the first 14 years of his career. He later went on to play for the Dallas Stars and the Montreal Canadiens, among other teams.
How Corey Perry Made it to the Top
Corey Perry grew up playing hockey in his childhood with the Peterborough Minor Petes AAA program, a member of the Ontario Minor Hockey Association’s Eastern AAA division. Perry guided the Peterborough Petes to victory in the first-ever OHL Cup Bantam AAA tournament hosted in Peterborough in 2001. With 73 goals in 67 games that season, Perry had an outstanding season offensively.
In 2001, the London Knights selected Perry in the fifth round of the Priority Draft after a stellar minor hockey career. He contributed to the Knights early on, averaging one point per game in his first season, tallying 59 points in 60 games. Perry went on to play in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL).
In the year leading up to his NHL draft selection, Perry progressed to 78 points and was taken by the Mighty Ducks team of Anaheim in the 28th round of the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. Although it had been rumored that Perry would be traded to the Edmonton Oilers, exchanged with Mike Comrie, the move never took place because the Oilers’ general manager, Kevin Lowe, wanted Comrie to refund a part of the bonus money he’d received from the team.
Perry scored 40 goals, as well as 73 assists for a total of 113 points in only 66 games during the 2003-04 season. He became the first Knight to exceed 100 points in a single season, a record unbroken since Jason Allison did it in 1994.
Perry scored seven more goals in the OHL play offs. His scoring brilliance earned him a promotion to the Ducks’ American Hockey League (AHL) club, the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks, for the rest of the 2003-04 campaign. After the season, Perry was then chosen to the Ontario Hockey League’s First-Team All-Star team.
Perry earned 130 points, a junior career high point in 60 games with the Knights as he entered his fourth and final season in 2004-05. He scored an extra 38 points in the post-season, helping the team win the J. Ross Robertson Cup as the Ontario Hockey League winners and advance to the Memorial Cup finals. In the championship game, the Knights defeated Sidney Crosby’s Rimouski Océanic 2-0. Perry scored 11 goals and 27 assists in 18 post-season games, with 18 games played.
In the 2005-06 season, Perry had his NHL debut with the Anaheim Ducks. Since then, he has managed to earn one point in every one of his first four appearances with the Edmonton Oilers. Despite this, he was relegated to the AHL early in the season, along with another youngster and future teammate Ryan Getzlaf.
On January 28, he played against the Los Angeles Kings and scored a career high of three goals for the first time. During the Ducks’ run in the 2006 Stanley Cup play offs, Perry and Getzlaf were brought back from the Portland Pirates AHL club, where they accumulated 67 points in 36 games.
Perry had a hat trick of assists in the Western Conference Final against Edmonton, where the Ducks were eliminated. Altogether, Perry scored 25 points in 56 games for the Anaheim Ducks in his first season.
As part of the “Kid Line”, alongside Ryan Getzlaf and Dustin Penner in 2006-07, Perry scored 44 points in 82 games. In 2007, Anaheim won the Cup 2007, contributing 15 points in 21 games throughout the play offs.
Perry provided an assist on Getzlaf’s goal to give the Ducks the lead back after the Senators had knotted the game. However, a late three-goal surges by the Senators sealed a 5-3 victory. The Ducks went on to win the next two games to capture the Cup for the first time in franchise history. Perry recorded a goal and an assist in the last round.
During the 2008-09 season, Perry had a significant career breakthrough. He scored 32 goals and 72 points for the Ducks. Against the Vancouver Canucks on November 1, Perry had five points, including four assists. Due to his abrasive style of play, he was suspended by the NHL for four games after elbowing Claude Giroux, an opponent from the Philadelphia Flyers.
Against the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome on November 13, 2019, he played his 1,000th career season NHL game. This accomplishment made him the 340th player in NHL history to accomplish the feat.
Despite playing in two consecutive Stanley Cup Finals defeats against Tampa Bay Lightning, Perry became a free agent on July 29, 2021, and chose to sign a two-year contract with Tampa Bay Lightning.
Perry has participated in several international competitions over his career, including the Olympics. Perry was a member of the team Canada junior team that won the Olympic gold medal in the 2005 World Junior Championship. He played on the top line with Sidney Crosby and Patrice Bergeron.
Perry scored one goal in Canada’s opening game of the 2010 Winter Olympics, an 8-0 win against Norway. Perry was instrumental in the team’s success. He served as captain of the Canada team in the 2016 IIHF World Championship, where they won the gold medal.
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