Trade: Ryan O'Reilly to St Louis Blues

[LGR4GM]

I'm sorry, did we ever win with ROR? Did Colorado ever win with ROR? Has St.Louis ever won with ROR? Of the 2 teams that ROR has been traded away from, they have both suddenly gotten better. Correlation? Maybe but this team was never going to become Jack Eichel's as long as ROR was in that locker room. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by LGR4GM

[Drunkard]

6 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

I'm sorry, did we ever win with ROR? Did Colorado ever win with ROR? Has St.Louis ever won with ROR? Of the 2 teams that ROR has been traded away from, they have both suddenly gotten better. Correlation? Maybe but this team was never going to become Jack Eichel's as long as ROR was in that locker room. 

Lazy argument. In that case we should send Eichel packing as well because he's done nothing but lose since he's been here. One 10 game winning streak that is quickly being cancelled by yet another losing streak.

[LGR4GM]

1 minute ago, Alkoholist said:

Lazy argument. In that case we should send Eichel packing as well because he's done nothing but lose since he's been here. One 10 game winning streak that is quickly being cancelled by yet another losing streak.

It's not lazy. It's looking at a correlation. ROR goes to teams and they lose. The team he leaves suddenly rebounds. That's interesting. 

[Drunkard]

2 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

It's not lazy. It's looking at a correlation. ROR goes to teams and they lose. The team he leaves suddenly rebounds. That's interesting. 

Then it's a garbage argument. Before the trade O'Reilly had been with the team as long as Eichel had. If trading away O'Reilly was what lead to the rebound then who is to blame for the current losing streak? Who is to blame for the way they just laid down and died against Philly? The team reaction seemed pretty emo/defeatist to me.

Should the Capitals have traded away Ovechkin 5 years ago because they couldn't win with him after 10 years?

[darksabre]

Here's the thing: O'Reilly was a problem in the locker room. How much his locker room problems hurt the team, it's hard to say. But given the return we got for Ryan, I have to imagine Botterill was motivated to remove him for reasons other than asset management. 

That the cancer appears to have spread in the Blues room now just lends more credence to the idea. Is it definitive? No. But there's no reason to poo poo it either. 

[LGR4GM]

16 minutes ago, Alkoholist said:

Then it's a garbage argument. Before the trade O'Reilly had been with the team as long as Eichel had. If trading away O'Reilly was what lead to the rebound then who is to blame for the current losing streak? Who is to blame for the way they just laid down and died against Philly? The team reaction seemed pretty emo/defeatist to me.

Should the Capitals have traded away Ovechkin 5 years ago because they couldn't win with him after 10 years?

Really? The team reaction seemed light years better than what they did in the past. They had a team meeting. Talked about specific mistakes. Talked about how they hadn't won or earned anything. Last year it was all "we got unlucky and we need to work harder and I can be better".  Sounds different to me. 

Also ROR was a 6 year veteran when he joined the Sabres. Eichel was a rookie, then got injured, then had last year. Little different. 

I didn't say they should have traded away ROR. I merely commented that once he left 2 separate teams they magically got way better and that St Louis sounds like an emo dumpster fire right now. Just found that an interesting correlation. 

10 minutes ago, darksabre said:

Here's the thing: O'Reilly was a problem in the locker room. How much his locker room problems hurt the team, it's hard to say. But given the return we got for Ryan, I have to imagine Botterill was motivated to remove him for reasons other than asset management. 

That the cancer appears to have spread in the Blues room now just lends more credence to the idea. Is it definitive? No. But there's no reason to poo poo it either. 

That's all I was saying. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by LGR4GM

[Drunkard]

4 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Really? The team reaction seemed light years better than what they did in the past. They had a team meeting. Talked about specific mistakes. Talked about how they hadn't won or earned anything. Last year it was all "we got unlucky and we need to work harder and I can be better".  Sounds different to me. 

Also ROR was a 5 year veteran when he joined the Sabres. Eichel was a rookie, then got injured, then had last year. Little different. 

I didn't say they should have traded away ROR. I merely commented that once he left 2 separate teams they magically got way better and that St Louis sounds like an emo dumpster fire right now. Just found that an interesting correlation. 

That's all I was saying. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. 

Correlation does not equal causation though and the supposed "depth scoring" that we traded O'Reilly for is complete trash. Sobotka is flat out horrible and Berglund is half a step above that. If Botterill wanted to trade O'Reilly that badly he should have waited an extra day, let Mr. Drill another well pay the bonus, then trade him for a better return than the trash we got.

[LGR4GM]

Which is why I keep saying correlation not causes. Almost like I did that deliberately. 

Berglund is quite useful on the 4th line. Sobotka is in fact useless. But then again the ROR trade wasn't made for this year, it was made for next year and the year after. It was made for Tage and that first. Even so, the locker room is light years better than last year and that is an interesting correlation. 

[Drunkard]

12 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Which is why I keep saying correlation not causes. Almost like I did that deliberately. 

Berglund is quite useful on the 4th line. Sobotka is in fact useless. But then again the ROR trade wasn't made for this year, it was made for next year and the year after. It was made for Tage and that first. Even so, the locker room is light years better than last year and that is an interesting correlation. 

Almost $4 million in cap space for a guy who is quite useful on the 4th line and $3 million in cap space for a guy who sucks worse than a waiver pick up isn't encouraging from my standpoint. Thompson may or may not develop and the pick is a gamble who may not contribute until Eichel's contract is nearly over. The Blues may stink right now, but they still got the better end of this trade. We took their dead wood and some futures for a really good player locked into good contract that Buffalo already paid the lion's share of.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Alkoholist

[bg17]

2 minutes ago, Alkoholist said:

Almost $4 million in cap space for a guy who is quite useful on the 4th line and $3 million in cap space for a guy who sucks worse than a waiver pick up isn't encouraging from my standpoint. Thompson may or may not develop and the pick is a gamble who may not contribute until Eichel's contract is nearly over. The Blues may stink right now, but they still got the better end of this trade. We took their dead wood and some futures for a really good player locked into good contract that Buffalo already paid the lion's share of.

Doesn’t all that speak to how badly they wanted to get rid of a guy that produced on the ice? 

[LGR4GM]

4 minutes ago, Alkoholist said:

Almost $4 million in cap space for a guy who quite useful on the 4th line and $3 million in cap space for a guy who sucks worse than a waiver pick up isn't encouraging from my standpoint. Thompson may or may not develop and the pick is a gamble who may not contribute until Eichel's contract is nearly over. The Blues may stink right now, but they still got the better end of this trade. We took their dead wood and some futures for a really good player locked into good contract that Buffalo already paid the lion's share of.

Yes, right now the Blues have the better end of the trade. If Thompson flames out that hurts. If the 1st overall pick busts that seals it as a bad trade. 

Considering I didn't like the trade and still don't care for it my next question is why would Botterill pull the trigger on it? He's made other trades that are quite good. He traded for Jeff Skinner and gave up basically nothing. I think there are 2 parts to that answer. 1 was that he thought Berglund could play center and support Casey. In addition to this he felt that Tage was a really good young player. Jury is still out on Tage. The second part is the aforementioned locker room issues last year. Botterill said it would get fixed and thus far that appears true. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by LGR4GM

[Drunkard]

15 minutes ago, bg17 said:

Doesn’t all that speak to how badly they wanted to get rid of a guy that produced on the ice? 

Sure. It's obvious that they wanted to get rid of O'Reilly for whatever reason (probably some combination of his blue demeanor, his scrape with the law, and to "give" the room over to Eichel). I understand it, I just disagree with it.

[Randall Flagg]

1 hour ago, darksabre said:

Here's the thing: O'Reilly was a problem in the locker room. How much his locker room problems hurt the team, it's hard to say. But given the return we got for Ryan, I have to imagine Botterill was motivated to remove him for reasons other than asset management. 

That the cancer appears to have spread in the Blues room now just lends more credence to the idea. Is it definitive? No. But there's no reason to poo poo it either. 

Lehner: Active manic depressive alcoholic, tanking Sabres games, noted dark cloud in locker room. In his absence, a stretch in which Sabres win 3 games of 16 in regulation, on the power of an entire goal per game allowed fewer relative to last season's save percentages, turns into 10 wins. 
Chad Johnson: An even worse goalie than Lehner, on record as saying things to the effect of "I can't wait to show my talents on a REAL team" upon arrival to St. Louis. Contributes to worst goaltending in the league in St. Louis, gets freaking cut from the entire team within two months.
Okposo: Just as much depression evidence as ROR, team is doing fine with it. 
Bortuzzo and Sanford: Get into a literal fistfight at Blues practice. 
Pietrangelo: Worst defending of his career, looks like Brent Seabrook. 
Bouwmeester: Looks like Josh Gorges at his worst, gets spoonfed minutes.
Jake Allen: Spent his first 15 games allowing fewer than 3 goals approximately one time, allowing 5 goals about five times as often as that. 
Sabres 2nd and 3rd line centers: In a league that is scoring as much as the 05-06 season, the Sabres' second and third line centers are scoring at rates worse than those of the second and third line centers, Flynn and Mitchell, on the tank team. Literally. We have worse center depth than the 14-15 Sabres team.

Ryan O'Reilly: Scoring 5v5, already has more 5v5 goals than all of last year as I predicted on the same page of this post in July, and it took him like 20 games. A plus player on a very minus team. A positive possession player on a very bad possession team. Over a point per game 1C, playing the best hockey from a center St. Louis has seen in decades, drawing universal praise from their fans, leaving community holes that Beaulieu actively mentions working really hard to try and fill. Blues fans talking about how valuable his on-ice work ethic is for guys like Tarasenko and other important core pieces. Said "I need to be better" at a per-loss-rate roughly comparable to Jack Eichel last season. 

Conclusion:  The Sabres are better because they traded O'Reilly, the Blues are worse for having him, and Ryan O'Reilly is to locker rooms what abnormal cell growth developing into a ravaging disease that destroys families is to five year olds that want to become astronauts and firefighters. 

This continues to be the worst take I've ever read on this board. Again, not that a new locker room is a good thing for the Sabres. But that ROR is actively "spreading cancer" to the Blues locker room. It's weak, lazy, and quite frankly rather disgusting. It never mentions above locker room things we actually have evidence for, and it actively avoids even trying to understand hockey teams and how they work. It also reeks of spending approximately 0.0 seconds watching any Blues hockey this year or taking time to read and converse with Blues fans who do (hint, I've done plenty of both). It makes me disinterested in talking about hockey here, to be honest. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by Randall Flagg

[darksabre]

3 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

Lehner: Active manic depressive alcoholic, tanking Sabres games, noted dark cloud in locker room. In his absence, a stretch in which Sabres win 3 games of 16 in regulation, on the power of an entire goal per game allowed fewer relative to last season's save percentages, turns into 10 wins. 
Chad Johnson: An even worse goalie than Lehner, on record as saying things to the effect of "I can't wait to show my talents on a REAL team" upon arrival to St. Louis. Contributes to worst goaltending in the league in St. Louis, gets freaking cut from the entire team within two months.
Okposo: Just as much depression evidence as ROR, team is doing fine with it. 
Bortuzzo and Sanford: Get into a literal fistfight at Blues practice. 
Pietrangelo: Worst defending of his career, looks like Brent Seabrook. 
Bouwmeester: Looks like Josh Gorges at his worst, gets spoonfed minutes.
Jake Allen: Spent his first 15 games allowing fewer than 3 goals approximately one time, allowing 5 goals about five times as often as that. 
Sabres 2nd and 3rd line centers: In a league that is scoring as much as the 05-06 season, the Sabres' second and third line centers are scoring at rates worse than those of the second and third line centers, Flynn and Mitchell, on the tank team. Literally. We have worse center depth than the 14-15 Sabres team.

Ryan O'Reilly: Scoring 5v5, already has more 5v5 goals than all of last year as I predicted on the same page of this post in July, and it took him like 20 games. A plus player on a very minus team. A positive possession player on a very bad possession team. Over a point per game 1C, playing the best hockey from a center St. Louis has seen in decades, drawing universal praise from their fans, leaving community holes that Beaulieu actively mentions working really hard to try and fill. Blues fans talking about how valuable his on-ice work ethic is for guys like Tarasenko and other important core pieces. Said "I need to be better" at a per-loss-rate roughly comparable to Jack Eichel last season. 

Conclusion:  The Sabres are better because they traded O'Reilly, the Blues are worse for having him, and Ryan O'Reilly is to locker rooms what abnormal cell growth developing into a ravaging disease that destroys families is to five year olds that want to become astronauts and firefighters. 

This continues to be the worst take I've ever read on this boards. Again, not that a new locker room is a good thing for the Sabres. But that ROR is actively "spreading cancer" to the Blues locker room. It's weak, lazy, and quite frankly rather disgusting. It makes me disinterested in talking about hockey here, to be honest. 

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. 

[Randall Flagg]

1 minute ago, darksabre said:

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. 

This is laughable.

[LGR4GM]

Just now, darksabre said:

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. 

True. I didn't like the Samuelsson draft pick. That doesn't mean he won't be a good defender for us in the future. 

As I have said, I just find it interesting.

Just now, Randall Flagg said:

This is laughable.

I think this is a little too far. 

I think GT has a major impact on the Blues and is a major reason for their slide. That said even with the removal of a top player like ROR the Sabres are somehow doing better. The sum of the parts do not add up to the whole and it is worth thinking about. 

[darksabre]

2 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

This is laughable.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

The trade happened, for good, or for bad, it really makes no difference.

The Sabres play a game tonight that is at a critical junction of their season.  Focus.

Before you guys start yelling that I am suggesting limiting discussion, I am not.  I just want to limit bad discussion.

[TrueBlueGED]

2 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

I'm sorry, did we ever win with ROR? Did Colorado ever win with ROR? Has St.Louis ever won with ROR? Of the 2 teams that ROR has been traded away from, they have both suddenly gotten better. Correlation? Maybe but this team was never going to become Jack Eichel's as long as ROR was in that locker room. 

 

2 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

It's not lazy. It's looking at a correlation. ROR goes to teams and they lose. The team he leaves suddenly rebounds. That's interesting. 

Colorado made the playoffs with him more recently than the Sabres franchise has seen the postseason.

1 hour ago, darksabre said:

Here's the thing: O'Reilly was a problem in the locker room. How much his locker room problems hurt the team, it's hard to say. But given the return we got for Ryan, I have to imagine Botterill was motivated to remove him for reasons other than asset management. 

That the cancer appears to have spread in the Blues room now just lends more credence to the idea. Is it definitive? No. But there's no reason to poo poo it either. 

The Blues missed the playoffs last season and this year have among the worst goaltending performances in the league. It's a hard sell that O'Reilly morphed their goaltenders to poo.

[PerreaultForever]

You can break it down and argue it forever but isn't it simpler to just go pre trade St. Louis decent team, Buffalo bottom of the league. post trade Buffalo decent team, St. Louis a disfunctional mess. After that, you have to wait to see what we get for the picks, or if we use the money we saved to sign somebody.

What is more bothersome is Lehner is actually playing some good hockey this year and even made multiple saves in a shootout last night. wtf? Got to think he simply quit on us last year and wanted out period. 

[Thorner]

2 hours ago, darksabre said:

Here's the thing: O'Reilly was a problem in the locker room. How much his locker room problems hurt the team, it's hard to say. But given the return we got for Ryan, I have to imagine Botterill was motivated to remove him for reasons other than asset management. 

That the cancer appears to have spread in the Blues room now just lends more credence to the idea. Is it definitive? No. But there's no reason to poo poo it either. 

Right. I'm far less comfortable dismissing the ROR locker room concerns now, than I was before. It could be nothing, but St. Louis's locker room being a mess does nothing to strengthen the other side of the argument. Given the option of reversing the trade, I would not risk it. 

With so many of Botterill's moves having the ring of intelligent, value based decision making to them, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that his reasons for wanting ROR moved were sound. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by Thorny

[Thorner]

56 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

Lehner: Active manic depressive alcoholic, tanking Sabres games, noted dark cloud in locker room. In his absence, a stretch in which Sabres win 3 games of 16 in regulation, on the power of an entire goal per game allowed fewer relative to last season's save percentages, turns into 10 wins. 
Chad Johnson: An even worse goalie than Lehner, on record as saying things to the effect of "I can't wait to show my talents on a REAL team" upon arrival to St. Louis. Contributes to worst goaltending in the league in St. Louis, gets freaking cut from the entire team within two months.
Okposo: Just as much depression evidence as ROR, team is doing fine with it. 
Bortuzzo and Sanford: Get into a literal fistfight at Blues practice. 
Pietrangelo: Worst defending of his career, looks like Brent Seabrook. 
Bouwmeester: Looks like Josh Gorges at his worst, gets spoonfed minutes.
Jake Allen: Spent his first 15 games allowing fewer than 3 goals approximately one time, allowing 5 goals about five times as often as that. 
Sabres 2nd and 3rd line centers: In a league that is scoring as much as the 05-06 season, the Sabres' second and third line centers are scoring at rates worse than those of the second and third line centers, Flynn and Mitchell, on the tank team. Literally. We have worse center depth than the 14-15 Sabres team.

Ryan O'Reilly: Scoring 5v5, already has more 5v5 goals than all of last year as I predicted on the same page of this post in July, and it took him like 20 games. A plus player on a very minus team. A positive possession player on a very bad possession team. Over a point per game 1C, playing the best hockey from a center St. Louis has seen in decades, drawing universal praise from their fans, leaving community holes that Beaulieu actively mentions working really hard to try and fill. Blues fans talking about how valuable his on-ice work ethic is for guys like Tarasenko and other important core pieces. Said "I need to be better" at a per-loss-rate roughly comparable to Jack Eichel last season. 

Conclusion:  The Sabres are better because they traded O'Reilly, the Blues are worse for having him, and Ryan O'Reilly is to locker rooms what abnormal cell growth developing into a ravaging disease that destroys families is to five year olds that want to become astronauts and firefighters. 

This continues to be the worst take I've ever read on this board. Again, not that a new locker room is a good thing for the Sabres. But that ROR is actively "spreading cancer" to the Blues locker room. It's weak, lazy, and quite frankly rather disgusting. It never mentions above locker room things we actually have evidence for, and it actively avoids even trying to understand hockey teams and how they work. It also reeks of spending approximately 0.0 seconds watching any Blues hockey this year or taking time to read and converse with Blues fans who do (hint, I've done plenty of both). It makes me disinterested in talking about hockey here, to be honest. 

Botterill wanted ROR gone. Unfortunately that says more by itself than this eloquent post does in it's entirety. 

[darksabre]

17 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

 

Colorado made the playoffs with him more recently than the Sabres franchise has seen the postseason.

The Blues missed the playoffs last season and this year have among the worst goaltending performances in the league. It's a hard sell that O'Reilly morphed their goaltenders to poo.

People keep confusing my saying he's part of the problem to mean that he's the entire problem. St. Louis clearly has issues. Those issues are not entirely Ryan O'Reilly. But I believe it's foolish to simply hand wave the O'Reilly variable. He's the same player he has always been on yet another team where his stats don't matter. This trend isn't nothing. 

[Thorner]

29 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

 

Colorado made the playoffs with him more recently than the Sabres franchise has seen the postseason.

The Blues missed the playoffs last season and this year have among the worst goaltending performances in the league. It's a hard sell that O'Reilly morphed their goaltenders to poo.

No one needs to prove that ROR is actively tanking the Blues. It's far less important than Botterill's belief that ROR was a player he did not want on the SABRES. 

ROR could theoretically have an MVP level season for the Blues and it still be a necessary move from the Sabres perspective. 

Occam's Razor here: What's more likely, that Botterill (who is generally seen to be an intelligent man) valued the assets we got back for ROR as equal or better on ice value (really?) or that he adjudged ROR to be a personality he wanted removed from the room? That anyone could see the move would likely negatively affect the net talent on the team, speaks even more certainly to how likely it is that he was moved for reasons beyond talent.

Botterill's reasoning could be wrong, but for those dismissing locker room concerns as part of what went into the equation, you are off base. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by Thorny

[TrueBlueGED]

7 minutes ago, darksabre said:

People keep confusing my saying he's part of the problem to mean that he's the entire problem. St. Louis clearly has issues. Those issues are not entirely Ryan O'Reilly. But I believe it's foolish to simply hand wave the O'Reilly variable. He's the same player he has always been on yet another team where his stats don't matter. This trend isn't nothing. 

The whole thing reeks of "you can't win with Phil Kessel" to me. Mostly I just wish I'd stop letting myself get sucked back into a useless debate.