



A day after it revealed that Corey Perry and Francois Beauchemin were diagnosed with the mumps, only Perry returned to practice this afternoon at Honda Center, much to the delight of his teammates. Although he skated on his own prior to the team taking the ice, Perry’s presence alone was a welcome sight after he was hospitalized for three days and missed four straight games.

“I had the swollen jaw and the swelling in my face that led to headaches,” said Perry. “I had the body aches and fever, too. Those things weren’t fun.”

Perry admits he didn’t really know what the mumps were when the doctor told him the news, but knew he had to let the virus run its course. “I’ve learned more in the last week about it, but there’s really no medicine for it,” he said. “Sometimes the booster helps and sometimes it doesn’t, and vaccinations don’t always work. I had my shots as a kid.”

Along with swelling in the face and headaches, Perry says he ran a fever north of 100 degrees (102 at its highest) and experienced hot and cold sweats, but never experienced a loss of appetite. But during his stint in the hospital (three days and two nights), Perry says he didn’t do much.

“I had no energy to do anything,” he said. “My day consisted of the doctor coming in at seven o’clock in the morning, looking at me and then taking off, me going back to sleep, and then the doctor coming back in to draw blood.”

Although he didn’t rule out the weekend games on Saturday at Los Angeles and Sunday at Honda Center against Florida, Perry says he’ll need to regain strength before he returns to the lineup. “It’s going to take some time,” he said. “The body is a little weak. Hopefully I can do all the right steps to get ready. It’s mostly the lungs. Being weak is the most noticeable thing.”

Head coach Bruce Boudreau says he didn’t know what to think at first when he learned that Perry contracted mumps. “I didn’t know how to react,” he said. “My first thought was how contagious is this? You hear about it when you’re a kid, but I haven’t had to think of the mumps for an awful long time. Our training staff and doctors did a tremendous job isolating it and making sure it didn’t spread any more than it did.

There was no update today on Beauchemin’s status, but his availability this weekend is in doubt.

“It was nice to see [Perry] in the room because the guys miss him,” said Boudreau. “You’re glad to see that he’s healthy because you know he went through a little bit of a scare there. Seeing him on the ice, you know he’s on the road to recovery. He’s the kind of guy who shouldn’t take too long to recover.”

LONG TIME COMING

After the dust settled from last night’s epic 6-5 shootout victory over the rival Kings, Jakob Silfverberg had a chance to reflect on what surely will go down as classic. Silfverberg was stuck in a 16-game scoring slump, but broke through last night in a big way. The 24-year-old tied a career high with his two-point performance (1g/1a) and also added a shootout goal, improving his career SO record to 8-of-14 (57%).

“It was a great feeling, and I don’t think there was a better game to do it other than the playoffs,” he said. “It was a great atmosphere. The fans were great. It felt really good to get that first one out of the way.”

The upbeat Swede says he knew his time would come if he kept putting in the work. “Frustration isn’t going to get you anywhere,” he said. “I had a lot of great chances, but it was just a matter of putting the puck in the net. I knew that if I kept working hard, eventually it would pay off. Yesterday it happened, and it was a great feeling.”

As for his shootout success, confidence, he says, is the name of the game. “It’s a lot of fun taking shootouts and penalty shots. I have good confidence going in. You have to believe in yourself in the shootouts. So far, so good.”