​Corey Perry, at 40, is the NHL’s gritty comeback kid.

On television Tuesday night, there was a symbolic image of the Edmonton Oilers bench during the last and ill-fated game in this year’s Stanley Cup finals, won by a great team, the Florida Panthers.

Corey Perry, the player they call The Worm because of his ability to squeeze into impossible spaces in front of the opposing team’s net, patted Oilers Number two star, Leon Draisaitl, on the leg while they were seated on the bench, trying to get him motivated during what would be the Oiler’s final game.
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Draisaitl had had a low key and disappointing final series, with two goals and four assists. In later games, he appeared sluggish and was possibly fighting an injury. 

But it was left to Perry, jersey Number 90, to take it upon himself to egg on Draisaitl.
 
The veteran of five teams in the Stanley Cup Finals in the past six years, Perry played for the Dallas Stars, the Montreal Canadiens, the Tampa Bay Lightning, and the last two years with the Oilers.

All these lost series could be viewed as a negative for Perry’s career, but on the other hand, it is quite an achievement that he helped all those teams make it to the Stanley Cup finals.
 
Perry’s career has been checkered, but also durable, with dashes of brilliance. He helped the Anaheim Mighty Ducks win the Stanley Cup in 2007. Also, with the Mighty Ducks, in the 2010-11 season he scored fifty goals and won the league’s Maurice Richard Trophy as the number one goal scorer. Impressively, that year he won the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player.
 
He has had success, too, at the international level, winning Gold for Canada at the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Winter Games. He also took Gold at the IIHF World Hockey Championships. 

But in 2013, his then team, the Chicago Black Hawks, placed him on indefinite leave for personal reasons. An internal investigation soon found that Perry was engaged in conduct that was “unacceptable and in violation of his contract and team policies.” Perry said he was seeking professional help for “substance abuse.” Accordingly, he took a year off from the game.
 
Despite his troubles, he bounced back and eventually signed with the Edmonton Oilers. In his two years with the Oilers, Perry gradually built himself into a team stalwart. In this year’s final playoff run, he scored three goals against the Florida Panthers. That is the same number as superstars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl had combined, proving, once again that he is the comeback kid. Next year, Corey, The Worm may turn.

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