This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

David Perron

Seventeen seasons, 768 points and 825 penalty minutes, and a twenty-sixth-overall pick who outlasted his draft class.

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	DET	76	17	30	47	-12	55	7	0	4	151	11.3	15:38
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1131	310	458	768	+2	825	84	4	45	2413	12.8	16:50

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

76 games for Detroit, 17 goals and 30 assists for 47 points, 7 on the power play, 55 penalty minutes, 15:38 a night and minus-12, with 4 game-winners. He took 43.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 942 minutes, the 13th percentile, and his ice went 39-45 against an expectation of 31.24-40.78.

Eight goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and four more conceded than they called for. A 13th percentile chance share carried by finishing is the shape of a 36-year-old winger’s season.

The Finesse Game

197 attempts at a median of 28 feet with 32 per cent of them from inside twenty, 151 of those on goal, converted at 11.3 per cent against a career 12.85 across 2,413 shots.

458 career assists in 1,131 games and 84 career power-play goals. He plays the wall and the half-boards on the power play, holds pucks longer than a man his age should be able to, and has scored between 17 and 27 goals in ten different seasons.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 202 and took 55 penalty minutes.

825 career penalty minutes in 1,131 games. He is not a heavy forechecker but he is a genuinely irritating one — he finishes checks along the wall, holds sticks, talks, and has spent seventeen seasons being the man the other bench complains about.

The Intangibles

Twenty-sixth overall in 2007 by St Louis, seventeen seasons, six organisations, 768 points in 1,131 games and a Stanley Cup in St Louis.

Four game-winners at 36 and 45 in his career. He arrived in Ottawa on the same summer as a goaltender and a second-pair defenceman, and the point of all three is to put experience around a roster whose best players are 22 and 25.

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
4 of his 17 goals late or in overtime, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
agitatora strength· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He is not a heavy forechecker but he is a genuinely irritating one — he finishes checks along the wall, holds sticks, talks, and has spent seventeen seasons being the man the other bench complains about.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He plays the wall and the half-boards on the power play, holds pucks longer than a man his age should be able to, and has scored between 17 and 27 goals in ten different seasons.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“Twenty-sixth overall in 2007 by St Louis, seventeen seasons, six organisations, 768 points in 1,131 games and a Stanley Cup in St Louis.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 942 minutes

Expected goals: 43.4%; 13th pct
Shot attempts: 45.9%; 22nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 45 against. Expected: 31.2 and 40.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

51st

Numbers

13th

The report ranks him 38 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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, 2023-24 · 76 games

Top speed: 21.2 mph; 13th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.34 a game
Distance: 2.35 miles a game
Hardest shot: 85.9 mph; 44th 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

2023-24 with DET · 942 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, 2023-24

The club: DET took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.4% — 2.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 942 minutes at five-on-five — 51st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Moritz Seider	42.7%	43.8%	43.8%
Ben Chiarot	39.3%	45.3%	46.0%
Lucas Raymond	48.1%	41.2%	48.2%

42.7% together, 43.8% for him apart and 43.8% for Seider apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

197 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.