Corey Perry is usually at his best under pressure.

Perry, 36, is one of just two players to ever win a Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold medal, plus world juniors, world championships, Memorial Cup and World Cup titles. The moment is rarely ever too big for him.

Unless it involves public speaking.

When Perry’s younger brother, Adam, got married in 2013 in London, Ontario, he was in charge of the best-man speech. Perry suited up, stood up in front of family and friends at the Blue Duby restaurant and delivered the shortest heartfelt address of all time.

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“All he got out was, ‘Hi, I’m Corey, A.J.’s brother,’ and started bawling,” said Perry’s wife, Blakeny. “I had to go up and stand beside him and say the speech for him. He wouldn’t stop crying. He’s just an emotional guy.”

It wasn’t just his brother’s wedding. There were tears for Perry at his own wedding to Blakeny in Toronto. When Perry had his jersey retired by the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights, he got out two sentences. Imagine what it’ll be like Friday when he visits Anaheim to play against the Ducks, with whom he played for 14 seasons, for the first time.

“I’m a big softie, I guess,” Perry said with a smile. “On the ice, it’s a different person.”

No one would ever label Perry a “softie” as a player. The former Hart Trophy winner and future Hall of Famer is a beast below the circles. He’ll spear guys. He once squirted water on then-Avalanche coach Patrick Roy during warmups. He has a penchant for falling on goalies.

“A mean son of a bitch,” his former general manager, Brian Burke, said.

“A shit disturber,” his former coach, Bruce Boudreau, said.

“A nightmare,” current Tampa Bay Lightning teammate Pierre Edouard-Bellemare said.

“I used to hate him,” Lightning defenseman Zach Bogosian said. “But now I love him.”

Perry is reviled by opponents and revered by teammates. Part of that is the edge with which Perry plays, which is rare for an elite scorer. As Kings defenseman Drew Doughty said, “Not many superstars are like that. It makes him a dual threat.” But another reason is that the only people who see the other side of Perry are those he’s closest with. They saw him overcome a medical condition at an early age, when he had to fight to skate. They saw him show up as a scrawny, 5-foot-9 teenager in London and turn into a Memorial Cup champ and MVP, beating out Sidney Crosby. They saw him go from the 13th forward on the greatest world juniors team to the top line. They saw him score 50 goals with Anaheim, then go to the Stanley Cup Final in his first two seasons after getting his contract bought out by the Ducks.

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Most don’t get to see the doting dad, the homebody who loves to fish and still drives a pickup truck. They don’t see the sneaky funny personality and pranks, the behind-the-scenes charity work and, yes, the sentimental side.

“He only gives so much to the (public),” Blakeny said. “No one gets to see the real him. What they see on the ice is what they perceive to be his personality. It’s almost like he is a ‘Jekyll and Hyde.’ Who he is on the ice is one person, and off the ice is another.

“You’ve just got to get to know him.”

So I tried. I went to London to experience the town that shaped Perry and that he still calls home. I spoke to family and friends, current and former teammates and coaches. I spent some time with Blakeny and Perry’s 4-year-old son, Griffin, who, like his dad, probably would sleep in his hockey gear if he could.

“You’ve got to talk to other people,” his dad, Geoff Perry said. “Because he wouldn’t say shit even if he had a mouth full of it.”

Geoff and his wife, Nancy, wondered whether their son would ever be able to skate.

Perry was six months old when he was diagnosed with clubfoot, a birth defect in which the foot appears to rotate inward at the ankle. He wore a cast and opposite feet shoes. It’s a curable condition, but frustrating for a young kid and his parents. “He used to pound his cast on the floor,” Geoff said. “He didn’t like them, which I don’t blame him for.

“We still have a set of his casts in one of our closets. He can show it to his kids one day because it’s a big part of his life.”

Geoff worked for the Ontario Provincial Police, a family vocation. (Geoff’s father worked for them, too. Adam and Perry’s uncle, Bob Martin, are also police officers but in London.) Perry grew up in Haileybury, a town of 4,500, and the family moved to Peterborough when he was 10. By then, Perry had already showed he was something special on the ice.

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Perry started at the neighborhood rink, where Geoff knew the arena manager. Dad would go down for coffee in the morning and throw a puck on the ice, and Perry would zip around. Geoff built a rink in their backyard, full regulation size, with boards and lights. When Perry was 3, he was watching a hockey game one Saturday night, playing with his mini stick and a tennis ball that he’d knock up against the crunch. He turned to his mother, Nancy, a teller at Scotiabank.

“I’m going to play for you on TV someday,” Corey said.

Nancy was stunned, thinking, “Oh, yeah right.” But she said, “That’d be nice.”

Corey and brother Adam (also known as A.J.) were huge Canadiens fans, with Vincent Damphousse and Denis Savard their favorite players. They had a Patrick Roy poster on the wall, too. Adam was the oldest but quickly knew who the superior player was, with Corey scoring 205 goals as an 8-year old. It made Corey a target for opposing teams and players, who would go after him. It made Perry tougher. So did his battles with his brother.

“I was always the fool to get in the net and he had to shoot on me,” Adam said, laughing. “His compete level is next level, and it’s contagious. I knew he was special, but for him, it all started in London.”

Scan the walls on the concourse at Budweiser Gardens in London and you’ll spot the Knights Hall of Fame.

There are photos of legends like Brendan Shanahan, Darryl Sittler, Patrick Kane and Rick Nash. On the far end is the baby-faced Perry, No. 94, who helped the junior program return to prominence after some down years. It seemed unlikely when Perry first showed up in London as a 5-foot-10, 150-pound winger.

“He grew up there,” Geoff Perry said. “And became a man.”

Mark Hunter and brother Dale had taken over the Knights, with the former NHLers starting their rebuild by picking Nash and Perry in back-to-back drafts. Perry had caught the Hunters’ eyes when he won a championship in Peterborough on a team that had no business winning against a stacked team that featured Brent Burns. “Even at 16, he scored 30 goals and found all the ugly ways to score,” Mark Hunter said. “He had a lot of pushback and never backed down from anyone.”

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But Perry had to beef up first. The first thing the Hunters told Perry was to put on some weight, which his billets, Bob and Linda Martin, tried to help with. The couple, along with their kids, Colin and Justine, would eat healthy portions at dinner of roast beef and pasta, then give Perry some ice cream.

“A couple months go by. Everyone else in the house gained weight, except Corey,” Bob Martin said.

Perry scored a combined 53 goals in his first two seasons in London, but his teammates still give him grief over his first one. It started with a Dennis Wideman shot from the point and grazed in off the jersey of Perry who, fittingly, was parked in front of the net. “When he broke a scoring record, we’d always tell him,’ Well the first one didn’t count,'” quipped teammate Dylan Hunter.

“When you’re a goal scorer, you take it any way you can get it,” Nash said. “He was a smaller guy, but he didn’t shy away from the hard areas. I knew right away he’d be really good.”

Perry got picked in the first round (No. 28) of the 2003 NHL Draft by the Ducks, something he believes wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the Hunters and the Knights program. They ran the junior club like an NHL team, demanding a lot.

“I couldn’t imagine anything more,” Perry said. “You’re only 16 years old, and your whole life is in front of you. Things start to fall in place, you learn how to be a pro, how to work on and off the ice, you just grow up and mature. That’s what they taught me.”

Because of the NHL lockout in 2004-05, Perry got to spend another season in junior. It became a historic one, as Perry’s Knights and Sidney Crosby’s Rimouski went on a collision course for the Memorial Cup. Perry, who scored 47 goals that season, led the Knights on an OHL-record 31-game undefeated streak. One of the big moments in the run was Perry’s fight with Kitchener’s Mike Richards, who went on to play 11 NHL seasons. There was a scrum behind the Knights’ net, in which the whole team got involved, then Perry and Richards skated to mid-ice for an epic bout.

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“They still talk about that in London,” former teammate and best friend Dany Syvret said.

“One of the best moments in Knights history,” Dylan Hunter said.

“He said, ‘Come on, let’s go,'” Dale Hunter said. “That just set the tone.”

The London-Rimouski Memorial Cup final was one for the ages. The 9,000-seat Budweiser Gardens was packed, with an electric atmosphere. With no NHL, the hockey world focused more eyeballs on this matchup. Crosby, a generational talent, was set to go No. 1 in the upcoming draft, but Perry wasn’t going to let him steal the show.

“He wanted to prove he was right up there with him,” Dale Hunter said.

In the second game of the final, Perry got sucker-punched after a whistle. Had there been concussion protocol back then, Perry would probably have been sidelined for a while. But Perry returned the next shift and ended up Memorial Cup MVP, and he finished the playoffs with 38 points (11 goals) in 17 games. Perry doesn’t remember much about the game.

“He had a nickname of ‘Gumby’ with a lot of the fans,” Bob Martin said. “Corey would get hit, and we’d say, ‘Oh my God, he won’t get up.’ He’d then get up with a little shake and away he goes. He was absolutely fearless.”

The Knights celebrated in their home dressing room afterward, with former great Shanahan even in the house for it. The group, which had bonded over video game battles on PlayStation’s “MLB The Show” and dinners at Spaghetti Eddies, forever etched itself in junior hockey lore.

“Being part of that special team is something I’ll never forget,” Perry said.

That same year, 2005, Perry played on the greatest world junior team of all time, for Canada.

The roster included Crosby, Richards, Patrice Bergeron, Shea Weber, Ryan Getzlaf and Brent Seabrook. The Canadians outscored their opponents 41-7 in six games, including a 6-1 thrashing of the Alex Ovechkin-led Russians in the final. Stunningly enough, there was doubt even in Perry’s mind about whether he was going to be on the roster.

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After one of the last days of camp, Perry said coaches told him, ‘If you don’t hear from us, you made the team.”

The phone rang that morning.

“I’m like, ‘Ugh, not again,”’ Perry said.

It was coach Brent Sutter. He sat down the shaggy-haired Perry.

“What will you do to be on this team?” Sutter asked.

“Anything,” Perry said. “I’ll fill water bottles. I just want to be on the team.”

“Go cut your hair,” Sutter said. “And take some teammates with you.”

Perry laughed about it recently and said, “I made the team, and the rest is history.”

Perry started as the 13th forward, and after an injury to Jeremy Colliton, he got moved up to the top line with Crosby and Bergeron and was one of Canada’s best players. Perry’s good friend, Syvret, was one of the few players on that team who hadn’t been drafted. Syvret believes Perry’s hat trick in the final exhibition sealed his spot.

“For some reason, he’s always been that guy,” Syvret said. “‘Well, he’s not strong enough, not a good enough skater.’ Everyone sort of says he’s ‘not something.’ But he was our best player in the OHL, and the story shifted to Corey Perry is on the bubble. I’m like, ‘Holy shit, how am I going to make it, and he’s not? What the eff is going on?’

“He didn’t complain. That’s not his m.o. He just put his head down and worked, and was one of the best players.”

Every time Perry drives by Guelph on the 401 between London and Peterborough, he thinks about one of the craziest days of his life.

It was Perry’s Cup Day in the summer of 2007 after winning the championship with the Ducks. He would go on to be a face of the franchise, along with Getzlaf, as the “Twins” led Anaheim on several playoff runs. Perry had a 50-goal season. He won the Hart Trophy. But hoisting hockey’s holy grail will always be his favorite moment there.

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So Perry wanted to share it with everyone he loved.

The day began in Peterborough at the Perry home, but the Knights sent their team bus over to pick up a group of 30 friends and family and bring them to London. Perry had an scheduled autograph appearance at a local dealership, and they planned a stop at a BBQ restaurant and to end the night at Joe Kool’s, their favorite bar.

But on their way to London, the 401 was at a standstill after a major accident. Perry asked the driver, Adrian, if he could drive on the shoulder for a while, which they did for about a mile. Then they were stuck.

“Hey, I’ve got the Cup on the bus,” Adrian yelled.

“You don’t have it on the bus,” one man yelled.

So Perry pulled the Cup off the bus and put it in the front seat of the man’s convertible.

“Is this good?” Perry quipped.

Kids were yelling out of a sunroof of another car.

“Is that real?!”

“Did you steal it? We just saw one at the Hockey Hall of Fame.”

“No,” Perry said. “I just won it!

Perry spent the next hour in the middle of 401 during rush hour sharing the Cup with random people on the road. Kids, families, cops. The rest of the night belonged to London. Anaheim is where Perry became an NHL star, but London has “always been home,” he said. It’s where he grew up with the Knights and won his first major championship. It’s where he built a 9,000-square-foot home, a few miles from the arena, putting up a backyard rink for his son. It’s where he spends his summers fishing and playing golf with buddies like Syvret and Doughty, who teamed up with him for a tournament. “He carried me,” Doughty said, “But I’ll still say I’m better.” It’s where Perry trains in the offseason with several NHLers like Bo Horvat, and where skating coach Kathy McLwain helped him extend his career after knee surgery during his last year with the Ducks. “I’ve had players who were cocky, their rep followed them around,” McLwain said. “But Corey always had an open attitude. He just doesn’t want to give up.”

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Syvret said Perry’s buddies all order the star winger’s go-to-drink at Joe Kool’s in London — the “Peterborough Martini” — a mix of vodka, water and a splash of cranberry juice. On the wall across from the bar is a photo of Perry at the end of the night on his Cup day, glassy-eyed and smiling, holding the Cup with some friends.

“There are a ton of Perry fans here,” Syvret said. “And he hasn’t forgotten where he came from.”

London is also where Perry met the love of his life, Blakeny.

It was 2010, and they connected through mutual friends at an outdoor patio bar in town. Blakeny, from Timmins, Ontario (“home of Shania Twain”), was studying at Western University. She wasn’t a hockey fan, laughing recently as she recalled how she was bartending during the Olympic Games that year, when Perry won a gold medal in Vancouver.

“I didn’t know who he was,” she said.

Their first date was a place outside London called “African Lions Safari,” in which you drive your car through a zoo, with animals approaching you to be fed. “Something different,” she said. Blakeny eventually moved to Anaheim to join him — they could only do distance for so long — and on their four-year anniversary, he proposed. They were at their Newport Beach home, walking their dogs, Max and Ace, after practice one day. He got down on one knee and, as usual, was a man of few words.

They got married at Evergreen Brickworks, an old brick factory in Toronto. You’d never know it was in the city, with its green, lush walking trails and gardens. They had a poutine truck and live music and they danced the night away. “The hottest day I’ve ever experienced,” Blakeny said.

The couple settled in Southern California, and life was great. They got involved in local charities, from the Learn to Play Program to the Ronald McDonald House, where Perry once sliced his finger cooking breakfast. They welcomed their first child, Griffin, in August 2017. With Perry in the middle of an eight-year, $69 million deal that went through 2020-21, he envisioned being the rare player to spend his entire career with one team.

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Then, one night in June 2019, Perry was having dinner in Toronto with his agent, Pat Morris. The town was buzzing with the Raptors in the NBA Finals. Morris brought up the news that the Ducks planned to buy out the rest of his contract. It was a move then-GM Bob Murray called one of the toughest he’s ever made.

Perry said there’s still no hard feelings, and he appreciated everything the organization gave to him. Still…

“Personally, it’s a shock,” Perry said. “You don’t ever expect to hear that, feel that. When the words came out of my agent’s mouth, I was taken aback. I realized this is a business, and different opportunities are going to come after.”

Blakeny said her husband was motivated by the buyout and, in the end, it might have rejuvenated his career, with a chance to see what it’s like to play for other teams.

“Corey will bet on himself every single day,” Blakeny said. “He is very confident. He knows what he can do and I don’t think it’ll let it affect him. He used it as fuel to keep proving people wrong.”

When Perry scored his first goal with the Lightning on Nov. 23 against the Flyers, he threw the metaphorical monkey off his back on his way to the bench.

He checked his iPhone after the game and saw a text from Blakeny: “You better bring home the puck.”

Perry had promised Griffin, now 4, that he’d give him the puck of the first goal he scored in Tampa Bay. He never envisioned he’d go his first 17 games without a goal, the longest season-opening stretch in his 17-year career. Griffin kept the faith, greeting his dad with fist bumps through the glass by the Zamboni entrance during warmups. The kid welcomes his dad home every day, wearing his hockey gear (down to shoulder pads and pants). They play mini-sticks in the living room, watch games together at night. “He wants to be like his dad,” Blakeny said.

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“Every morning, we wake up and it’s ‘Dad, are we going to play hockey?'” Perry said. “‘Can you help me?’ It’s hockey, hockey, hockey. He loves it. He’ll be at the game on Blake’s lap and he’ll take it all in.”

Visiting dad at the office. 🥰

— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) December 3, 2021

This is what Perry missed for most the last two years, when he played for the Stars and Canadiens after the buyout. In Dallas, despite breaking his foot tripping over a baby gate on the eve of camp, Perry was one of the Stars’ best players in the playoffs, including scoring the double-overtime goal in Game 5 against the Lightning in the Cup Final. But Perry had to play in the bubble in Edmonton, away from his family, for several months. When Perry signed with the Canadiens before last season, fulfilling a boyhood dream, he knew because of the border restrictions that Blakeny and Griffin wouldn’t be able to join him. No one knew how long Perry, signed to the taxi squad, would be gone, except him.

“He told me, ‘I’m not going on the taxi squad. I’m not leaving,'” Blakeny said. “Just watch.”

Perry helped the Canadiens on a surprising run to the Cup Final against the Lightning, mentoring young players like Cole Caufield along the way. When Caufield got sent down earlier this season, Perry reached out. The two hugged after a Lightning game in Montreal in December. “He’s someone I’ll always lean on,” Caufield said. But that meant Perry spent another extended period without Griffin.

“It was almost a full year by the end of it,” Perry said. “It puts things in perspective.”

Perry wanted stability for his family, hoping for a two-year deal this past summer. There were several teams interested, including the Canadiens. But the Lightning, who had courted Perry the previous two offseasons, gave him the desired term and finally got their man, signing Perry to a two-year, $2 million deal. Perry’s long-time friend Pat Maroon, a teammate in Anaheim, was the biggest recruiter, calling him often.

“Come down here.” “You have to play here.” “You’re going to love it.” “We’re going to win.”

Captain Steven Stamkos said pretty much everyone in the Tampa Bay dressing room lobbied for Perry to be signed.

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“I think he can push us over the edge again,” Maroon said.

It took only a few games for Perry to get an “A” on his sweater, a telling gesture considering the Lightning’s already deep leadership group. Ryan McDonagh said Perry has a knack for speaking up at the right moments.

“First of all, he’s got an aura about him,” coach Jon Cooper said. “Everything he says makes sense. There’s no fluff. There’s no B.S. … It’s why winning follows him around.”

Perry, after a slow start offensively, now has 10 goals (a 22-goal pace), four shy of 400 for his career. He’s joined Maroon and Bellemare on a third line that has provided a huge lift in trying to replace the Yanni Gourde line. Perry could sense the hunger in the back-to-back champs during summer phone calls and now feels it from being around them. The chance to win another Cup drives Perry.

“I remember in Dallas and Montreal, telling guys that I won in my second year and had never been back,” Perry said. “As you get older, you realize how hard it is to win. I just keep saying, ‘Don’t take it for granted. You never know when it’s going to be over.'”

Perry is enjoying life in Tampa, with his Davis Islands home within a slap shot of teammates like Stamkos and McDonagh. Maroon and his wife, Francesca, are close friends and a support group. There are a ton of young kids in the Lightning family, with Griffin starting to skate with Brian Elliott’s son Owen. “It feels really good to call somewhere home again,” Blakeny said.

When Perry returned home after scoring his first goal Nov. 23, Griffin was already asleep. So Perry put the puck on his son’s nightstand so he’d have it when he woke up. The next morning, Griffin ran into his parents’ room, “Dad I got the puck! Thank you!” The milestone puck is now framed in the room.

Considering Perry’s passion for the game, there will be plenty more pucks for Griffin to collect. Boudreau said Perry once told him he wants to play until he’s 50. Friends believe he’ll stay in the league until his legs fall off.

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“I’ll play until they say, ‘No more,”’ Perry said. “I love the game so much. I love being around the rink. I love being around the guys, the day-to-day life, the camaraderie. The winning, the ups and downs. There’s so many emotions that go on through a whole season behind the scenes. I just love it.”

(Top photo courtesy of Blakeny Perry)