The Edmonton Oilers beat the Vancouver Canucks 6-2 on Thursday night in Edmonton, the game featuring many great scoring plays by the Oilers, but Corey Perry stole the show.He drove the Canucks crazy and the hometown crowd to jubilation with his antics, scoring a Corey Perry hat trick in the game, and reminding Edmonton fans how the player we loved to hate is now the player we love to love.
Related: Game grades in Oil’s 6-2 win
What is a Corey Perry hat trick? A point, an ambush, and one devious S.O.B. of a mindfrak.
The point came from a greasy battle won behind the net, Perry getting the puck to Mattias Ekholm, who slammed it back down low, with Adam Henrique picking up the puck and slamming it home in net on a wicked wrap-around.
The ambush? It came in the second period off to the side of a scrum, with the Oilers mobbing Vancouver’s fierce Conor Garland after Garland took a hard poke at Edmonton goalie Calvin Pickard. Off to the side of the scrum around Garland, all on his own, stood Vancouver star Quinn Hughes. In an WWF-like moment of turn-around being fair-play, Perry charged over, gave Hughes an aggressive face-wash, then grabbed him and roughly threw him to the ice.
It was a nasty move by Perry for sure, but was worth the penalty he got on the play, if only to send a message to Vancouver that if Edmonton’s star players can get mauled and cross-checked in the face, so can Vancouver’s star players. That’s the NHL jungle and Perry is a long-time king of the forest.
The Canucks were irate at Perry the rest of the game, going out of their way to hit him and sometimes missing.
As for the devious mindfrak, that came after his takedown of Hughes, when Vancouver’s Teddy Blueger tried to draw him into a fight. Blueger threw off his gloves and started punching, but the lanky Perry kept on his own gloves and held off Blueger with his long arms. It was Blueger who went to the penalty box, not Perry.
At the Cult of Hockey
LEAVINS: Game grades in Oil’s 6-2 win
Staples on politics
