The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton wrote about David Perron’s minor transformation this past offseason:
Now 35 years old and entering his 17th NHL season, David Perron knows he can’t get ready for a new year the way he might have at 23.
“I talked with Alex Tanguay at my end-of-year meeting, and he mentioned himself that in the later years of his career, he wished that he maybe dropped five, six, seven pounds and made sure he showed up to camp in incredible shape, and that’s exactly what I did over the summer,” Perron explains to the press after a Friday morning practice.
“I went from probably 200, 202 [pounds], and I’m at probably 194, 195 right now…I feel really good right now. Just working through those first couple days of soreness and then I’m gonna really start pushing…It’s one thing to play 3-on-3 in the summer, and there’s no physical plays, but I think you saw in the first two days, guys are trying to get physical to really increase the pace, and that’s what I’m out there to do.”
When asked what his motivation was, the Sherbrooke, Quebec-native quips cutting a few pounds “just to be able to follow Larks [Dylan Larkin] around.” In a moment of greater sincerity, he offers, “I don’t want to just take on a leadership role and just do that in the room. I want to be a guy that does it on the ice too.”
