Should the Toronto Maple Leafs Sign UFA Corey Perry?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are often said to be lacking in grit.

The Toronto Maple Leafs could make a splash in the free-agent market by signing veteran winger, and notable man of X-treme Grit, Corey Perry.

But should they?

After being bough out of the remaining two years on his $8.6 million dollar per year contract, Corey Perry is an unrestricted free-agent.  (Capfriendly.com).

Is he a good investment?

Corey Perry and the Toronto Maple Leafs

Corey Perry is a Stanley Cup winning, Hart Trophy winning, Maurice Richard Trophy Winning, 50 goal scoring, Team Canada making superstar.

Or at least he used to be.

Today he is a 34 year old coming off a season in which he played 34 games and only scored six goals.

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(Chart from evolvingwild.com and used with permission).

He is three years removed from scoring 30 goals and 60 points, and six years removed from his point-per-game prime.

For much of his career, Perry drove play and created scoring chances at an elite rate, but he has been declining for the last few years. He is hard to evaluate for the last year however, because he missed so much time and his team was so bad.

Relative to his team last year, he was not good. However he actually seemed to be OK defensively, and he still generated a good amount of scoring chances, suggesting there’s still something there.

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If you look at the two charts above (the first is last year, the second is 2017-18) you can see that while he really took a hit last year, he wasn’t very good the year before either (except on the power-play, where he was good).

IF you keep looking at those charts, year by year, and go back in time,  you’ll see that he hasn’t been worth his money at 5v5 for a long, long time.

So is he good for the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Not if the price is a contract with any kind of cap hit.

If, however, Perry was willing to sign for something close to the league minimum, then I think his experience, grit, and power-play abilities would be a worthwhile risk.

On a third line, or even fourth line, with second-unit PP time, why the hell not? Corey Perry could bring a dimension the Leafs lack, and there is always the chance that he has one of those rare late-career resurgences that are romantic but almost never really happen.

I think Perry is the kind of bargain player the Leafs could look at to help fill out their roster on the cheap.

I do not advocate paying anyone you don’t think can at least potentially be a first liner anything over a million dollars, but if Perry will sign for that, the Leafs should definitely be interested.