I sympathize with anyone who thought that Corey Perry was washed (and a douche). He was 3 years older than Wayne at the time, was coming off of a pretty ugly looking season where even his reduced, old man production had taken a nose dive (5 goals in 57 games). But when you looked under the hood, 53% xG and 6% shooting that season for Dallas kind of suggested that he wasn't cooked yet.
On the other side, Simmonds was bad for a full 2 years prior to us signing him and had been heavily underwater in xG for 6 full seasons before we signed him.
We were convinced that we needed a tough guy. It's kind of fitting that this decision, based on a terrible assessment of our actual needs, continues to be a ridiculous impediment to success a few years later.
As a pure depth player, Corey Perry has 5 goals over his last 15 playoff games against the Leafs. A 27 goal 49 point pace in like 12-13 minutes a game. John Tavares has a 27G 63PT pace over the 9 of those 15 games he's played in...not to shit on Tavares, just to show the relative impact of Perry in the playoffs against us over the last 3 years.
