Injuries behind him, Hibbing’s Scott Perunovich looking forward with Blues

ST. LOUIS – If, as John Lennon once said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” then Scott Perunovich has lived plenty of life in the past nearly five years.

And not all of it has been fun.

The star defenseman from the Iron Range signed with the St. Louis Blues in 2020, but as of Tuesday’s game with the Minnesota Wild had skated in fewer than 100 NHL games, thanks to a variety of injuries. Tuesday’s game versus the Wild was his 11th (out of 20) for the season, as he works to regain the confidence and effectiveness that made him a star at the college level.

“I’m feeling good,” he said, following the team’s morning skate, clearly not wanting to revisit the health issues that have been such a storyline in his pro career. “Obviously early on in my career I was hurt, but that’s in the past, and there’s no need to talk about it any more.”

In April 2020, in that strange and scary time when the pandemic had the world effectively shut down, Peruovich went on ESPN (via Zoom, of course) and became the sixth Minnesota Duluth Bulldog to collect the Hobey Baker Award, given annually to college hockey’s top player.

He had already earned a pair of NCAA title rings with the Bulldogs in 2018 and 2019, and thanks to a late season surge in 2020 there was optimism that another Frozen Four run by UMD was coming, before COVID-19 brought the college hockey season to a screeching halt.

He signed with the Blues, and almost immediately got to know the team’s doctors as well as their coaching staff. The next few years included a trio of surgeries on various body parts, and some admitted frustration about a career that was seemingly being derailed at every turn.

When the Blues re-signed Perunovich to a one-year contract last summer, he was given another chance, and has been working to make the most of it, showing some flashes of his “control the game from the blue line” style that was so common when he wore maroon and gold.

“I think in the last few games I’ve been playing more confident, moving my feet more, trying to get on pucks, making plays and kind of playing like my old self again,” he said. “I’m just trying to build more confidence and trust every game.”

He is part of a Blues blue line crew that is like a college all-star team, playing with fellow Bulldog Justin Faulk, former Gopher Nick Leddy, former Badger Ryan Suter, former Alaska Nanook Colton Parayko and Matthew Kessel, who won a NCAA title at UMass.

“The Minnesota group has got a good chunk of the locker room with (Perunovich) and Faulk and then Suter’s from Wisconsin, me over there in Massachusetts and Parayko way the heck over there in Alaska,” Kessel joked, saying that you can seen things starting to click for Perunovich. “He has been playing very well and everyone knows he’s a good and talented defenseman with a lot of offensive ability. Being able to see him play well here, he’s a good piece for his team. We’ve had some guys hurt, so he’s been good.”

Perunovich spends his summers in and around Duluth, and purchased a lake place north of Hibbing last summer. While some spend Minnesota’s open water season chasing walleyes, Perunovich confesses to being more of a “sit on the pontoon and float around” kind of guy.

In Tuesday’s 4-2 loss to the Wild, Perunovich’s second goal of the season, and of his career, tied the game in the second period, when he got ahold of the puck after a bad Minnesota shift and popped a rising shot into the upper right corner.

It’s maybe another encouraging sign that after a rough start to his career some of the magic that helped Perunovich reach this level is returning to his game.

“It’s definitely not how I would’ve imagined it or wanted it to go with three surgeries, but everything happens for a reason and right now I’m still here,” he said. “So I’m trying to put my best foot forward and make a difference.”