Detroit Red Wings: Who Is The Newly Acquired Forward Brendan Perlini?

The Detroit Red Wings recently acquired forward, Brendan Perlini, from the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for prospect defenseman Alec Regula. The question that Red Wings fans are left with is, who is this new player?

As General Manager Steve Yzerman has taken over the helm of this organization, he has made the moves that he feels will best fit the team and organization as a whole. The Detroit Red Wings just added another forward into the mix after bringing in Brendan Perlini from the Chicago Blackhawks.

The initial reaction may have been a little bit of shock since the Detroit Red Wings gave away Alec Regula, who is one of the Red Wings many defenseman prospects. But looking at that, they have plenty of young defensemen in the system that losing Regula was worth the addition of Perlini.

Perlini is entering into his fourth NHL season after spending time with the Arizona Coyotes and Blackhawks organizations. His best statistical season was in 2017-18 with the Coyotes when he produced 30 points in the form of 17 goals and 13 assists.

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This season he has only seen the ice in one game for the Blackhawks where he only scraped together 7:49 of ice time and one shot. Born in the United Kingdom, Perlini does have some ties to the Red Wings, Dylan Larkin especially. Larkin and Perlini played hockey together as kids for the Triple-A Belle Tire program, which is a local greater Detroit area program. Now, this was some time ago, but the two did play together at one time in their younger days.

To look into Perlini’s value analytically over his four-season tenure, there’s nothing significant to be seen. However, some trends can be analyzed, his consistent negative Corsi rating (CF%) relative to the team would necessarily mean that he is on the ice for more shots against than he is shots for or less puck control from his team.

In the more recent years, looking at his Zone Start (ZS%) percentages, Perlini was deployed into the offensive zone rather than defensive zone which would make sense, since his Corsi ratings would lead someone to say that he should be used as more of an offensive “weapon” to put it sparingly.

Perlini is someone that could be added to a line as an offensive threat; he may not have astounding numbers for a former first-round pick. Giving up Regula for him was worth the gamble with the number of defenseman prospects left still in the organization.

Perlini has the possibility of joining the second or third line as an added scoring threat, who knows, maybe he sees some time playing alongside Larkin, or he could provide the spark needed to get Andreas Athanasiou going. With a surplus of forwards, he may start on the third line, with Blashill working him in to find the best line combinations he can to get the Detroit Red Wings back on track.

The all-in-all truth is that the trade was not bad whatsoever; losing Regula may seem bad now, but as time goes on and the other prospects come up through the system, it will be worth it if Perlini pans out to be something.