Blues right wing David Perron

By LOU KORAC
Like a fine wine, David Perron just keeps getting better with age.

The veteran Blues forward, in his third tour of duty playing for the team that drafted him 26th overall in the 2007 NHL Draft, produced the most points (60) in his nine seasons with the Blues and second-most of his career behind the 66 he had with the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017-18. 

Blues right wing David Perron (57)

Perron's 25 goals were just three off matching his career-high of 28 accomplished with the Edmonton Oilers in 2013-14 and matched the season-high for the Blues this season with Brayden Schenn.

Perron has thrived playing on a line with Ryan O'Reilly (and quite frankly, who wouldn't?) and took advantage of working on the top power play unit in the absence of Vladimir Tarasenko, who missed most of the season with a dislocated left shoulder.

But Perron, 32, was one of the outspoken players and certainly voiced his disappointment when the Blues, looking to defend their Stanley Cup of 2019, were bounced out of the first round of the playoffs by the Vancouver Canucks in six games.

Here are Perron's comments on why things didn't click for the Blues in Edmonton, his friendship with Alex Pietrangelo and why the Blues should bring the pending unrestricted free agent back, his displeasure for the round-robin setup, the Blues' window for winning another Cup and more:

Why didn't things didn't click in Edmonton?
To be honest with you, it's still pretty fresh. I watched the first two periods of that game yesterday, Vegas-Vancouver, and turned it off. Still kind of opened up the wound again. I was disappointed that we lost and I feel like we should have won that series. There's things that I said that I still believe. You see the energy that Vegas (has) got right now. They can go through anything if they keep that up. It's pretty unique, it's pretty special to see that. It is a tough time to maybe get yourself going at times. Maybe some guys felt that way, I'm not exactly sure, but you've got to find a way. You've got to do it within the group, on the bench and not wait for anything else on the outside because obviously there's no crowd, there's no nothing. The pressure of the games is a lot different than usual. There's not much, to be honest with you, when you go into a game normally on the road. In Winnipeg, let's say you know how hard it's going to be. The crowd's going to get on top of you, you've got to manage all that. This one, you've just got to go out and play. We didn't do a good enough job to manage that part.

On momentum and energy, how you get that?
Certain guys probably thrive on fans a lot more I think. I thought I did too, but I felt pretty good out there. I don't know, I think it's up to each individual to get yourself ready, not only this whole time when we were off to train as hard as we can so you're ready whenever we're going to start, it was sharp to stay mentally. You never know when it was going to last two weeks, three weeks, a month, and after three months, maybe it was just going to be cancelled. So I'm not sure how each guy managed that throughout the league. But you can tell that some teams, their guys as individuals got really prepared. I don't know if we lacked in that department or not, but it was evident from the first three games that we didn't grab our game the way we needed to to have success there.  

On arm around Pietrangelo after last game in a picture, how tough are feelings when leaving the organization?
Yeah, it's very hard. I've seen this picture flow around. I didn't do that thinking there was going to be pictures taken, but I could tell Petro was feeling it pretty good there. He was pretty choked (up) to be honest with you. It got me choked up a little bit too. Even thinking about it right now talking about it, I really hope he's going to be around I'm really good friends with him and his family. We've played a long time together now and we're always going to be close, regardless of what happens, but there's a business side of things here that could alter things maybe, I don't know, I don't want to get into that because it's not really my thing. That's his and the team and I don't know too much about the situation other than I really support him. I support him for anything he's going to choose to do. That's really my comments on that, but yeah that picture, I just kind of felt like he was thinking maybe it could be his last moments or not as a Blue. I just felt that I had to be there for him.

Without playing GM, if you had a say, what would be your pitch to keep Pietrangelo here in STL?
Just so he can buy more houses in St. Louis. The guy might as well be a realtor. He loves going around town and thinking he can look at different places. I think they obviously love St. Louis, Jayne is from St. Louis. I don't think there's a doubt that he would like to stay. I'm honestly going to just stay out of it, to be honest with you. For my own perspective, all I can tell is obviously you go into other places and sometimes it doesn't always play out the way you'd like. Maybe you think it's a perfect situation and it doesn't turn out to be. Even coming back to St. Louis for me, I'm sure there's some fans that weren't sure of David Perron (for a) third time, but it's went pretty good so far. You just try to make the best of it every place you go. I went to Pittsburgh and thought that maybe it was going to be the best situation for my career and probably was the one I enjoyed the least. Maybe with Edmonton with the way we were losing there just because the way it turned out. I couldn't find my game there. It's very hard. Petro's our leader, probably our best player most nights with O'Reilly. The way he played this year with this whole situation was extremely impressive. We play our whole careers to win the Cup. I think he wants to feel like he's respected. He wants to feel like he gets his share of things. I think he deserves it too.

How was the homecoming?
I wasn't sure to be honest with you. It went so quick. I can't believe I was able to make a quick decision like that. I was still hoping we were going to play and my parents were going to drive down the family. Mason, our five-year-old son starts school in St. Louis this week at some point, maybe Monday. They're really good with us. It's his first year, so maybe they're going to let us (wait) until next Monday while I sort things out. Now that we lost, I kind of made a quick decision to fly home the next day and just get back here really. As you can tell, I'm in the car right now just getting some stuff at the grocery (store), just trying to get packed up so we can drive down with the whole family and I'll be basically in St. Louis the whole time. There's a couple things hockey-related that I have to take care of too injury-wise, maybe just to get some check-up on things that were nagging, even through this whole thing. So hopefully it turns out good.

What was it like to see family after a month away?
Yeah, it's tough. Obviously they had to sacrifice a lot. I know it was on of the hardest things for a lot of guys with kids to do. The two-hour difference for me was tough because you get up in the morning after 8:30-8:45 start, which was in Edmonton, you go to bed maybe at 2 a.m. You get up at like 10-11 the next day, it's already 1 p.m. here, they're in the middle of the day, you talk to them for 10-15 minutes, you go onto your meeting, eating and all that stuff and the next thing you know, they're going to bed. That's the toughest thing, you didn't get to talk to them as much as you'd like, but they were supportive for us to try and get that second Cup. We didn't play the way we'd like, and that's really at the end of the day what's very disappointing to me, it doesn't sit well still, it's very hard to understand how we couldn't really just follow up our game. At certain times, we had really, really good spurts and then for the next 10 minutes, it wasn't so good. Disappointing.

With everything you went through this past year, how crazy a year has it been?
Pretty strange. It is what it is. Did I wish we had a second run at it defending our title in front of our fans, in front of other buildings? Would have it been different? I think it would have, to be honest with you. I really think it could have changed something. The pressure of games up there is different. For me, I said that before, I was really against this whole thing from a long time, (but) once you get there, you change your mind, you might as well do it. You're going to work as hard as you can and that's what I did. It wasn't as bad. You play so many tournaments growing up, no fans. I said that before, roller hockey tournaments, anything, summer tournaments, and knowing how competitive that I am, I knew I would come up to the challenge, but really was a worry as a group. I think it affected us a bit for sure. 

You've voiced your displeasure for the round-robin/seeding idea from the get-go. Why didn't you like it?
I still don't like it. It's not right. You play 71 games, and to have three games matter the most really, we saw how Boston, how Washington went through the same thing. So yeah, that's disappointing, that part's disappointing. We're not the only team. A team like Pittsburgh were really close to being in the top four in the East, I believe. They ended up having to play Montreal and you lose. That's tough for them too. At the end of the day, we had to come up and adjust to whatever situation and we didn't do a good enough job, but I do think that the 71-game season should have mattered a lot more. For us to have that short of an off-season last year and to manage to have this regular season through all the tough (things), we had to grind a lot. We had to go through a lot of things. It took a lot out of us. I don't know what it was, but we just couldn't grab it back again for one more time. It takes a lot of energy to stay at the top of the standings after the off-season we had. Guys were still injured, many little injuries that are just nagging like I was mentioning about myself, but there's 20 other guys going through that same thing. It was just tough to manage. You had to stay sharp, you had to keep training, stay ready, but we just didn't play good enough up there.

Did it feel it was more like work this year than last year?
Let's be honest. It's never work. I'll always remember this about guys that I played (against), top players in the league like Crosby, they enjoy that part so much and that's what I did this year. When I was going through kind of this year injury-wise and all that stuff, and to have to show up the next day and still be able to play as good as you can, that's what it's all about. Yes, it's tough, it's grinding, it grinds you mentally, but I think that's what athletes do. There's 20 other guys in the room that did the same thing.

Where does this group go next, is the window still open to win?
Yeah, it certainly is. I hope the younger guys (want) to get back to winning. ... I went to finals two years ago, won last year, and honestly went into this thinking we just weren't going to lose. It hurt me so much when we lost, to be honest with you. It took a lot out of me. You invest so much. You go through the struggles, playoff-wise, all that stuff, losing in first round, sometimes with St. Louis, sometimes with other teams thinking it's going to be maybe you'll never get there in the final, maybe you'll never win, and then when you go twice, you feel like you're never going to leave that part and you want to work as hard as you can to stay that. I just hope that guys go home and then we get the hunger again to do it. I think we should feel really comfortable with our group. You had Vladi, Bozie, Steener of our main, older guys that bring a lot of guidance to the group that weren't playing and a lot of those games and that changes our lineup, our depth, which is really a strength for our team. I really think we have a chance to keep doing it. I think we have a really good team and I don't make the decisions. There's going to be a lot of things that can happen, but for me, I think we can do it. We just have the believe in our team identity. When we did it against Vancouver, you look at the corsi, all that stuff, the puck possession time, we were killing them but we just didn't do it long enough and we have to wait.

What will the of your summer be like, your approach to training?
It's going to be the same thing. Pretty much the last five, six months, which is hard. You want to have time where you can just completely unplug, and I think for the next month or so, it's really going to be important guys do that. I think we will do that mostly after what we lived throughout the whole year, including JayBo, which we obviously missed a lot, but I think it's important. Honestly, I can't wait to get back to St. Louis, get my kid to go on in school and maybe minor hockey. I mentioned a couple things to look at and then who knows, maybe some procedures to do or not after that. I just want to get healed up, feel good about myself, feel good about my body so I can start training as hard as I can to get back and keep improving for next year.

On not having Steen in the lineup:
Steener's a guy that brings a lot of guidance, the way we play as a group. The role that he did last year going from basically a guy that was playing top two lines for most of his career to going down to the fourth line and having one of the better fourth lines in the whole playoffs. Those guys were scoring important goals. You see Vancouver, Motte, Beagle, those guys scored big goals, Virtanen scored a couple, I think against us as well. That's what you need. You need scoring from everywhere to have a chance to win in the playoffs, and yeah, he's a guy who brings the guidance, he brings a little bit of the culture, the team identity. Back when we started slipping, started losing, he's a guy that goes on the ice, either with his words or his actions going on the ice, brings it back. The depth, we were affected for sure. If we had Barby, Sunny and Steener play together, I really think our identity would look a little bit different.

Has your game, your career, gotten better as you go on?
The few times in my career where I had really good chemistry with guys, I can basically be honest, I think the two times it really clicked with guys was with Ryan Getzlaf in Anaheim and 'O'Ry.' For a long long time, obviously we played for the last two years for the most part together. I'm very fortunate that it clicks with him that well because he's one of our most, if not, most important players. He plays the right way, we see the game very similarly as you can tell in puck possession, not losing pucks, keeping pucks alive, being strong on our sticks on the o-zone, and then obviously defensively, he does so many things well as well. I'm not the greatest skater and he's not either and I think it goes well in a sense that we kind of like go up the play together at the same time, we kind of see things at the same speed and he's just a very intelligent player, a very smart player in many aspects. For me, I just want to keep getting better. I want to keep improving. I want to be ready so that I keep having that opportunity putting myself in a place where I can play those minutes with him and even take on some more.

When you sign a contract, you never know when it's going to be your last one. People always worry about guys when they get into their 30's, how their game's going to go. It's been interesting for me so far the first two years of my 30's. I really want to keep improving. I think I proved this year for the first time I was basically more on the first power plays, 5-on-3's, 4-on-3's in overtime, 3-on-3. I really never had that. If you look at my career, I never really had that consistently and as a player, that's something you really want to have and on top of having it, I'm doing it with guys I clicked really well (with). With Schenner, same thing. With Petro, Schwartzy, our power play this year was really good. I think we were third in the league and I don't remember in St. Louis all my years that we were that high as a group. It was really fun to play with those guys. I think Marc Savard's another really smart guy that I hope we bring back. He's one of the main reasons why our power play was this high, to be honest with you. That's what I believe.