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Corey Perry gave inspiring speech in Edmonton Oilers dressing room to spark OT comeback win

Preston Hodgkinson
Preston Hodgkinson
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Jun 13 2025, 12:00 pm
Corey Perry gave inspiring speech in Edmonton Oilers dressing room to spark OT comeback win
Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Imagn Images

The Edmonton Oilers looked dead in the water after the first period of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.

They came out flat, ran into penalty trouble, and allowed the Florida Panthers to build a 3-0 lead after the first 20 minutes. All the while staring down a potential 3-1 series deficit. Things were dire as they entered the dressing room, and they needed a miracle to change their fortunes.

Luckily, they had Corey Perry to provide that spark in the intermission before the second period. The 40-year-old veteran has been a leader for this Oilers squad over the course of this playoff run, scoring nine goals and 13 points through 20 games. Only Leon Draisaitl, who notched the eventual winner, has scored more for Edmonton.

According to his Oilers teammates, he stood up in that first intermission and gave an inspiring speech to spark his team to a dramatic OT win to tie up the series at 2-2.

“Corey spoke up, when he speaks up, you listen, and you do what he says,” Draisaitl said after the game. “We did a great job of grabbing it, grabbing some momentum, and keeping it.

“The message is that he’s been in these moments. He’s not a guy that speaks up or yells at guys all the time, it’s not his character… When he speaks up, you listen, and it grabs your attention. He’s a heck of a leader.”

Draisaitl refused to divulge exactly what Perry told the Oilers in that intermission, but whatever it was worked. Edmonton scored three goals in the ensuing second period to tie the game up at 3-3 heading into the third.

To say that Perry has been in this situation before may be an understatement. In his 20 NHL seasons, he has played in six separate Stanley Cup Finals. Despite that, he has only won one Stanley Cup, which came with the Anaheim Ducks back in 2008.

Five of those six Final appearences have come within the last six years, which he has lost each time.

“It was a bit of a ‘Wake up, look at where we are here’… he’s a guy that everyone in that room respects so much,” Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said of Perry’s speech. “He’s been through it all, so when he speaks up like that, it means a lot, and I thought we did a good job responding.

“We did a great job of putting our heads down and continuing to fight.”

Vasily Podkolzin was another player who came up huge for the Oilers in this one. The young Russian was hard on the forecheck all night long and wound up potting the equalizer late in the second period.

He told reporters after the victory that it wasn’t just Perry who spoke up and gave a little insight into what was said.

“Leadership group, they talked to guys like me,” Podkolzin said. “We have to stick together, we have to fight every shift, every second. We’ll find a way to score one and then everything starts rolling.”

The Oilers will now head back to Alberta with the series tied at 2-2 and two of the remaining three games of the Stanley Cup Final set to be played in Edmonton.

Game 5 at Rogers Place is set for Saturday night.

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