David Perron finished last season with the Detroit Red Wings. A week into October, he's still unsigned, and the phone rang again this week.
Frank Seravalli reported Tuesday that the veteran winger keeps drawing expressions of interest, including a new one this week. James van Riemsdyk had contact with two teams in September, leading into camp.
Neither forward has a contract. And the regular season is already rolling, with the Red Wings sitting 1-2-0 after three games.
Both went in the first round of the 2007 draft and both closed out 2025-26 in a Detroit sweater. Neither had a deal by puck drop.
Perron's case is the messier one. He split last season, posting 25 points in 49 games with the Senators before landing in Detroit.
The Detroit stretch went sideways fast. Three goals, no assists and a -9 rating over 16 games.
But the 38-year-old still owns 812 points over 1,239 NHL games, plus 64 more in 110 playoff games. That's a resume teams don't ignore, and the calls keep coming.
James van Riemsdyk's 15-goal season hasn't landed him a deal
The other half of this story is quieter. Van Riemsdyk's two conversations happened in September, and camps have since come and gone.
The production was there. He put up 31 points in 72 games with Detroit last season on a $1,000,000 cap hit.
The -17 rating is what follows him into every front-office conversation. At 37, there's little runway left to explain it away.
He's a bit like a reliable used pickup on the lot. Solid engine, plenty of mileage, and buyers keep walking past to kick the tires on something newer.
So who blinks first? This is a winger who scored 36 goals for Toronto in 2017-18 and has 342 over his NHL career.
Here's the blunt part. Any contender picking unproven AHL depth over one of these two on a cheap one-year deal is making a bad bet.
Perron's market is clearly still breathing. For van Riemsdyk, the next phone call might decide whether there's another NHL chapter at all.
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Should a contender sign James van Riemsdyk before David Perron?
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