I agree that we have more proof of concept that Perron will age more gracefully. However, that doesn't negate the fact that he is already 3 years further along the aging curve.
Let's say we can say with certainty that Perron will be better from age 34-36 than ROR and Tarasenko will be in their 34-36 seasons. That doesn't mean that he will provide more value overall to us since we are in a window right now. ROR and Tarasenko are bigger components to the current roster than Perron is right now. ROR does way more non-offensive heavy lifting than Perron while still producing at a decent clip. He plays 2+ extra minutes a night, he plays center and he will be the guy responsible for matching up against the top player of every team we face. Tarasenko and Perron play similar roles/minutes, but Tarasenko has 35% more offensive production than Perron. I'm confident that ROR and Tarasenko at 31/32 will be noticeably better players next year than Perron at 34. If signing Perron forces us to lose one of 90/91 this summer, next year's team has a larger hole to fill than letting Perron walk. If extending Perron means that you lose both of ROR and Tarasenko beyond next year instead of keeping one, then I think the 2023/24 team and possibly the 2024/25 team is worse. The value gained between Perron's 34-36 years vs ROR/Tarasenko's 34-36 years could very well be more than erased by the value lost by losing the 31-33 years of ROR/Tarasenko to keep Perron from 34-36.
I'd rather eat a market value deal on Tarasenko than a market value deal on Perron (because I think Perron's market value is a 3 year deal with a decent raise on the AAV). Perron being closer to worth his current market price in year 3 of his deal than Tarasenko will be in year 5 of his deal doesn't outweigh the good we'd get out of Tarasenko in the front half of the deal. I think Perron will take a fairly hefty discount and I want to sign him if he does. But I am weary about prioritizing a 34 year old over a 30 or 31 year old because I think the 34 year old will age better.
A big reason I feel this way is because I don't view dead money in 2026+ as a huge risk. The cap will be increasing by millions each year at that point, so contracts that are expensive now will start looking cheaper quickly. A new CBA is coming in the summer of 2026. The NHL has made it clear that LTIRing aging players is pretty highly accepted. We're probably going to have to rebuild/retool at that point anyway. We've locked a lot of aging guys into contracts and the prospect pool isn't good enough for a huge core shift anyway. For all these reasons, I'm very much prioritizing the next 3 years over the years where ROR/Tarasenko are 35+. I view a potential +5% increase to team success right now as about the same value as -10% in 2026. I wouldn't have felt this way without the deals we gave Schenn, Binner, Faulk, and Krug, but here we are. We are in a window right now and Schenn/Krug/Faulk are all 30+. That is the reality, so I'm ready to start mortgaging futures.