There was a metric ton of chatter and speculation on the internet in the weeks leading up to the Ryan O’Reilly blockbuster trade from the Buffalo Sabres to the St. Louis Blues.
O’Reilly heard the chatter. How could he not? The O’Reilly rumors intensified at the NHL Draft in June. There were the ROR to Montreal whispers that turned to screams. There were the Carolina rumors that included the names of Noah Hanifin and Jeff Skinner. There were all kinds of rumors. Sabres GM Jason Botterill was steadfast and true to his word. Botterill wasn’t shopping O’Reilly. He was perfectly content to pay O’Reilly the $7.5 million signing bonus that was due him on July 1. Botterill said many times on the record that O’Reilly was an integral part of the Sabres rebuild. However, if teams really wanted him, there would be no discounts. Nope. Pay the steep, aggressive price or don’t bother calling. Then, in the late evening hours on July 1, O’Reilly’s agent phoned him to be ready for a phone call from St. Louis Blues GM Doug Armstrong. The rumors were true. Botterill leverage a prime asset and achieved a 5-to-1 return on his trade investment. That’s good business. Botterill never blinked first. Armstrong did because he and Blues head coach Mike Yeo targeted O’Reilly because they knew the man and the player they were getting from having worked with ROR on Team Canada at the past couple of World Championship tourneys.
O’Reilly is going into his 10th NHL season and is pleased as punch to be leaving a last place team for a team with a solid veteran leadership core and oodles of talent on its roster. “It’s nice. Once I got back from the World Championships this year, the rumors started flying around. You’re not sure what’s going to happen and then finally it does (happen). I didn’t know where I was going. I had no idea. I didn’t have a no move clause so to see it’s a team like St. Louis that’s just given a chance (to make the playoffs) and are in a “win now… mindset, it’s so nice to come to that. It’s refreshing. Even training all summer it’s like “this is possible…. If we do things right, we can win this. To have that mindset is nice to kind of recharge and have a fresh look…, O’Reilly told NHL Network Radio on Sirius on Wednesday morning.
The Sabres struggled in all phases of the game last season. They were short on talent and long on failed expectations. At even strength, the Sabres only scored 119 goals in 82 games played. That’s 31st out of 31 teams at 5v5. Their power play ranked 21st (19.1%) in the NHL after finishing at #1 the season before. The Sabres penalty kill was 22nd in the NHL with a 77.9% kill rate. The Buffalo goalies were brutal with their combines 3.39 GAA, which was 29th overall in the league.
The change it had to come.
O’Reilly was shown the door along with Evander Kane, Matt Moulson, Josh Gorges, Robin Lehner, Benoit Pouliot, Jacob Josefson, Jordan Nolan, Chad Johnson and Victor Antipin. Botterill and Phil Housley wasted little time moving bodies and replacing them with younger, more skilled replacements like Jeff Skinner, Conor Sheary, Tage Thompson, Patrik Berglund, Carter Hutton, Vlad Sobotka, and Rasmus Dahlin, the best hockey prospect in the world. O’Reilly is accountable to the failures he was a party to in Buffalo. Hindsight being 20-20, Ryan O’Reilly knows now that he could have done more to lead his former Sabres teammates out of peril.
“There’s a lot of good young pieces in Buffalo. We struggled to make that jump. I have to take responsibility as one of the veteran guys that needed to step up and do more. Unfortunately, I didn’t. It happens sometimes. We had a good year, we started to do things better and get back on track but then we would slip back and fall behind. We’d get back and have to build ourselves back up. The consistency wasn’t there that we needed. That’s tough to do. The best teams in the league do that. They have short skids then they are back on track and us (Sabres), our lows were just too low and it was just too tough to climb out of. I think for Buffalo, they’ve got a bright future. They’ve got a lot of great pieces there, young pieces that they will be a very, very competitive team….
O’Reilly said he spent six seasons in Colorado and was amazed at how aggressively the Avs fans booed him the first time he played in Denver as a member of the Sabres. O’Reilly says the boos won’t bother him from here on out. He will hear some boos from the leather-lunged loyalists in Buffalo, a town where people pull their Levi’s jeans on one leg at a time. Sabres fans are time of the “give it the college try… horse crap. They’ve waited patiently for a return to the playoffs after seven brutal seasons. Eichel and company will no doubt learn from the many mistakes that were committed by the previously leaders of the Sabres. This is Jack’s team now. He’s the captain who feels like the first three seasons of his NHL career have been wasted while playing for abysmal, cellar-dwelling Sabres teams.
O’Reilly is now looking to lead his Blues team to the Stanley Cup playoffs for a chance to win the Cup this season.