The On Deck Circle

This article is a weekly feature submitted by Stu Wilkinson.

With the Stanley Cup Playoffs starting tonight at 7:00 Eastern Standard Time, I figured it would be fitting to use this space to write up some sort of unsung hockey player. The problem is, I don’t know much about hockey, except that I like to watch it. Sure, I gained a lot of knowledge playing the game until I was eleven in the famed minor hockey hotbed of Calgary, Alberta, but all of that has been erased and replaced by my Mario Chalmers-esque basketball IQ. I’d love to write something about some player that flies under everyone’s radar but is a huge part of a successful NHL team, but I don’t really have the knowledge of the game required to recognize one of those players.

That inability to recognize a truly vital role player left me with one choice: Write about my boy Corey Perry, whose presence is so obviously underappreciated even I can write about it. If Corey Perry was on a Canadian team I’m pretty sure I’d be sick of hearing his name by now. Luckily, he plays in Anaheim and is overshadowed by the likes of Teemu Selanne, Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, and Home Depot spokesman Ryan Getzlaf. As a result of being on such a talented team located on the Western Coast of the United States, Perry is underappreciated by most hockey fans.

This season Mr. Perry netted 29 goals in 70 games, making him the top goal scorer on the Ducks and putting him in the top-30 of the NHL. He also racked up 108 penalty minutes, something that comes with the type of game he plays. Although he’s currently on the shelf with a lower body injury, my sources at Yahoo! Sports have informed me that he should be back for the majority of Anaheim’s first round series with Dallas, and that’s a very good thing for the Ducks. From what I saw in the playoffs last year, Corey Perry is a super-pest with added scoring talent. He’s like an upgraded version of Sean Avery, or a goal-scoring Jarkko Ruutu (Ruuuuuutuuuuu). He loves hitting people, getting in a goalie’s grill, and scoring goals.

At the frightfully young age of 22, Perry is one of the leaders on the defending Stanley Cup Champions, and he’s (hopefully) healthy and ready to help his team make another run at the Cup this year. Teams in the West better be ready to deal with the physical nature of his play (cough-DetroitRedWings-cough) in the later rounds of the playoffs or they’ll be turning the puck over and hitting the golf course in no time. Hopefully one of those Western teams can slow him and the Ducks down, because I don’t want Sir Sidney Crosby and Geno Malkin to have to deal with some punk who thinks he has the right to hit them hard. That would simply be dangerous and uncalled for.

Inside the Numbers
1 World Junior Championships Gold Medal
1 Stanley Cup
1 Memorial Cup
69 points in his first two NHL seasons
15 points in the 2006-07 playoffs
2 Red Wings have soiled themselves because of him

By the way, the real reason I wrote this up was because I wanted to embed this YouTube clip. It’s gold!