This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

David Perron

Twenty-four goals off a top speed in the 2nd percentile — the third-slowest forward in the league.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2007-08	STL	62	13	14	27	+16	38	3	0	1	68	19.1	12:33
2008-09	STL	81	15	35	50	+13	50	4	0	3	161	9.3	14:32
2009-10	STL	82	20	27	47	-10	60	5	1	2	166	12.0	16:09
2010-11	STL	10	5	2	7	+7	12	0	0	0	29	17.2	18:25
2011-12	STL	57	21	21	42	+19	28	5	1	4	114	18.4	18:17
2012-13	STL	48	10	15	25	0	44	2	0	2	84	11.9	18:00
2013-14	EDM	78	28	29	57	-16	90	8	1	2	220	12.7	19:08
2014-15	EDM/PIT	81	17	24	41	-25	62	3	0	2	196	8.7	17:20
2015-16	PIT/ANA	71	12	24	36	-1	62	4	0	1	147	8.2	15:13
2016-17	STL	82	18	28	46	-2	54	3	1	3	151	11.9	17:18
2017-18	VGK	70	16	50	66	+1	50	1	0	4	125	12.8	17:49
2018-19	STL	57	23	23	46	+3	46	7	0	1	112	20.5	17:06
2019-20	STL	71	25	35	60	+2	52	9	0	9	166	15.1	18:19
2020-21	STL	56	19	39	58	+6	22	6	0	2	151	12.6	18:33
2021-22	STL	67	27	30	57	+8	48	11	0	2	177	15.3	16:59
2022-23	DET	82	24	32	56	-7	52	6	0	3	195	12.3	16:55
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1055	293	428	721	+14	770	77	4	41	2262	13.0	16:55

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

24 goals and 32 assists in all 82 games, minus-7, 52 penalty minutes, 16:55 a night, 195 shots at 12.3 per cent. He was 34.

49.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 50th percentile — exactly average — with his ice at 51-54 against an expectation of 43.65-44.03. Seven better than the chances at the offensive end and ten worse at the defensive one.

Sixteen seasons, 1,055 games, 721 points, and 24 goals is his fourth 20-goal season in five years.

The Finesse Game

195 shots at a median of 27 feet, 31 per cent from inside twenty and 18 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside forty: 161 shots, 25 goals, 15.53 per cent. Beyond forty: 37 shots, one.

16 tip-ins and 29 slap shots in the shot-type record — an unusual pairing, and it describes a winger who plays the half-wall on the power play and the front of the net at even strength.

91.1 mph at the 52nd percentile.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 202, and the tracking line is one of the most extreme in this edition: 20.8 mph is the 2nd percentile — the third-slowest top speed of any forward in the National Hockey League — with 0.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game at the 5th.

Only Patrick Maroon and Sammy Blais measured slower among forwards, and he scored 24 goals in 82 games.

2.55 miles a game at the 47th percentile. Ordinary distance, no pace at all.

52 penalty minutes in 82 games is a high rate and it is his career pattern — 90 minutes in Edmonton, 62 twice, and 700-plus in total. He plays in the hard areas because he cannot get anywhere the fast way.

The Intangibles

26th overall in 2007, out of Quebec junior, three separate spells in St. Louis and a Cup there in 2019.

He is 35 and played every game. Robby Fabbri, on the same roster, registered the same 20.8 mph across 28 games, so Detroit are not short of forwards the tracking cannot flatter.

What the number cannot see is that they score anyway, and Perron has done it for sixteen years.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
5 of his 24 goals late or in overtime, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
49.8% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 44.7% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.1, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“it describes a winger who plays the half-wall on the power play and the front of the net at even strength”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He plays in the hard areas because he cannot get anywhere the fast way.”
takes-libertiesa strength· crosses the line and knows where it is
“52 penalty minutes in 82 games is a high rate and it is his career pattern”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,044 minutes

Expected goals: 49.8%; 50th pct
Shot attempts: 49.7%; 50th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 54 against. Expected: 43.6 and 44.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

48th

Numbers

50th

The two rank him within 2 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 82 games

Top speed: 20.8 mph; 7th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.20 a game
Distance: 2.55 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.1 mph; 73rd pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1044 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2022-23

The club: DET took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.8% — 3.6 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,044 minutes at five-on-five — 63rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Dylan Larkin	54.2%	45.4%	44.3%
Moritz Seider	54.7%	46.4%	42.7%
Dominik Kubalik	50.3%	49.5%	43.3%

54.2% together, 45.4% for him apart and 44.3% for Larkin apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

272 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 31% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.