David Perron

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

27 goals and 30 assists in 67 games for St Louis — 57 points and a plus-8 at 16:59 a night, the 65th percentile among forwards — with 48 penalty minutes.

49.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 934 minutes, the 49th percentile. His ice went 35-28 against an expectation of 35.44-36.14 — the chances said even and the goals came out plus-seven, on a club that finished 2nd in the league for finishing.

The Finesse Game

46 per cent of his points came on the power play — the 5th-highest of the 393 qualified forwards. Twenty-six of his fifty-seven. That is the single most important number on this page and it travels badly: St Louis had the 16th-best power play by expected goals and Detroit the 23rd.

9.33 shots per 60 is the 82nd percentile and 27 goals on 177 shots is 15.3 per cent, the 83rd.

37 per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 27th-lowest of 393, at a median of 30 feet, the 87th percentile. He is a perimeter shooter who converts at a high rate, which is an unusual combination and the reason the goal total keeps arriving from unlikely places.

1.94 even-strength points per 60 is the 60th percentile. Strip the power play and he is an ordinary second-line winger.

0.95 giveaways per 60 is the 13th percentile against 1.95 takeaways at the 71st — one of the better puck-security ledgers in the league.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 202, and 34 years old.

21.0 mph is the 6th-lowest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers, and 0.9 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 2nd-fewest. He crossed twenty miles an hour roughly once every four games across sixty-seven of them. 9.33 miles per 60 is the 25th percentile.

0.58 blocks per 60 is the 2nd percentile among forwards. He does not block shots and at 34 there is no reason he should start.

1.05 penalties taken per 60 is the 81st percentile — forty-eight minutes in sixty-seven games, and minus-0.21 net.

The Intangibles

Twenty-sixth overall in 2007, and 973 NHL games at 34 with 269 goals and 665 points across six organisations. One 66-point season, at 29, and nothing else above sixty in fifteen years.

A 34-year-old winger who cannot skate, does not defend and takes half his points from the power play is a specific and fragile asset. The finishing and the puck security are real; the delivery mechanism is a unit that finished 23rd in the league last season.

Detroit is buying the best two years of a fifteen-year career at the age they usually end. Nothing in this file argues against him and everything in it argues about how long.