When he was 15 and playing Bantam hockey, Anaheim Ducks’ forward, Corey Perry helped to lead his Peterborough Petes AAA team to the OHL Cup championship.
To that point in his very young hockey career, it was the biggest title Perry had ever won. He had 20 points in 8 games in that tournament, already demonstrating the kind of big-stage player he would be.
For some of his teammates in Peterborough, that was the biggest championship and only championship they would win while playing hockey.
For Perry, it was only the beginning.
“The OHL Cup was In Peterborough (that year),” Perry remembers. “It was the draft year to go to the OHL and that’s kind of where it started.”
Perry was selected fifth overall by the Knights in 2001 and since then has won every single major title that the sport of hockey offers. Some of them twice.
During his junior career with the London Knights, he led them to their first OHL Championship and Memorial Cup title in the 40 years of the franchise.
That same 2004-2005 season, Perry was also a part of what will always be one of Canada’s best-ever entries at the World Junior Hockey Championship. He made the team as the 13th forward and played himself onto the top line at the tournament alongside Sidney Crosby and Patrice Bergeron. They accounted for almost half of Team Canada’s goals in Grand Forks, N.D. Canada won gold without ever being really tested.
From there Perry worked his way to the National Hockey League and won the Stanley Cup in 2007.
Perry won his first Olympic gold at the Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010.
“Going into overtime in that game and knowing what was at stake… (winning) with family and friends watching… made it that much sweeter,” Perry recalls.
He won another Olympic gold in Sochi in 2014.
Then last year, also in Russia, Perry joined the triple gold club. He captained Canada to gold at the World Hockey Championship.
To top it off, he returned home after being left off Canada’s initial roster for the World Cup of Hockey and was added as an injury replacement for Jeff Carter and won gold there as well.
At 31, Perry’s resume is basically complete. All the boxes have been checked. Although, if he can find another title or two, he still has all kinds of time left for more.
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