Trade: Ryan O'Reilly to St Louis Blues

[Thorner]

3 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

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. 

A good point, though I'd argue for better or for worse ROR was more tied to his team's identity and leadership core than Kessel was. 

[darksabre]

2 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

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. 

I get that. I understand how much Phil Kessel was wrongly targeted. This isn't that though. 

[Thorner]

In fairness to the discussion and my bringing up of Occam's Razor: ROR may have asked to be traded. 

[WildCard]

21 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. 

If I could hug a post, it would be this one

[Drunkard]

44 minutes ago, PerreaultForever said:

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. 

This idea might hold some merit if O'Reilly were the only variable that changed. I think adding Skinner, Dahlin, Hutton, Ullmark, and Sheary have a heck of a lot more to do with the Sabres improvement on the ice than any sort of addition by subtraction nonsense that shipping out O'Reilly theoretically got them. I haven't watched the Blues play this season but it's been posited numerous times on here and HFboards that their goaltending has completely fallen off a cliff this season. I honestly doubt losing Thompson, Berglund, and Sobotka while adding an all around center who is scoring at career high rates while also producing positive fancy stat metrics can be serious looked at as the reason for their downfall.

[dudacek]

There is a large difference between saying “Ryan O’Reilly is a cancer who swallowed the Sabres and is swallowing the Blues” and saying “Jason Botterill decided he had a better chance of making the changes he wanted to make in the Sabres’ culture with O’Reilly gone.”

Sometimes people just aren’t the right fit for the role they are in.

2 minutes ago, Alkoholist said:

This idea might hold some merit if O'Reilly were the only variable that changed. I think adding Skinner, Dahlin, Hutton, Ullmark, and Sheary have a heck of a lot more to do with the Sabres improvement on the ice than any sort of addition by subtraction nonsense that shipping out O'Reilly theoretically got them. I haven't watched the Blues play this season but it's been posited numerous times on here and HFboards that their goaltending has completely fallen off a cliff this season. I honestly doubt losing Thompson, Berglund, and Sobotka while adding an all around center who is scoring at career high rates while also producing positive fancy stat metrics can be serious looked at as the reason for their downfall.

It is interesting how people are focusing on O’Reilly for the change in the two team’s fortunes when a far more likely catalyst is Hutton.

[North Buffalo]

10 minutes ago, dudacek said:

There is a large difference between saying “Ryan O’Reilly is a cancer who swallowed the Sabres and is swallowing the Blues” and saying “Jason Botterill decided he had a better chance of making the changes he wanted to make in the Sabres’ culture with O’Reilly gone.”

Sometimes people just aren’t the right fit for the role they are in.

It is interesting how people are focusing on O’Reilly for the change in the two team’s fortunes when a far more likely catalyst is Hutton.

Agreed, though if Tage and pick turn out good and Berglund gets healthy I am ok with trade... botka meh place holder jag..

[MakeSabresGrr8Again]

4 hours ago, Alkoholist said:

The fact that the Blues currently suck doesn't make this a good trade for Buffalo. O'Reilly currently has more points (29) than Berglund, Sobotka, and Thompson have combined (15) for a lesser cap hit ($7.5 million vs $8.275 for just over half the production). The Sabres get scoring from their top line and their defense. Center depth went from a complete strength to a total question mark.

Wrong way to look at the $$$$ and the whole trade for that matter.

Berglund and Sobotka's contracts will end before O'Reilly's. Ryan will get about $38M 'til then as compared to Berg and Vlad getting about $23M. Throw in TT at $2M for current contract (who knows if he even be around after that or how much on next contract....so far he doesn't have much bargaining power) and that brings us near $25M. That leaves about $13M to replace them with in the future for a couple years, and that's not to mention that we also got a 1st rd and a 2nd rd pick.

Right now the production we had hoped for (which wasn't allot) still can possibly be obtained or nearly. The picks and TT are the possible coups. Money will likely be spared at least for awhile. Cost controlled players will be coming in to replace them (Berg/Vlad).

 

[Thorner]

30 minutes ago, dudacek said:

There is a large difference between saying “Ryan O’Reilly is a cancer who swallowed the Sabres and is swallowing the Blues” and saying “Jason Botterill decided he had a better chance of making the changes he wanted to make in the Sabres’ culture with O’Reilly gone.”

Sometimes people just aren’t the right fit for the role they are in.

It is interesting how people are focusing on O’Reilly for the change in the two team’s fortunes when a far more likely catalyst is Hutton.

An excellent point, and not just because of what Hutton brings to the on-ice table. 

[MakeSabresGrr8Again]

2 hours ago, dudacek said:

There is a large difference between saying “Ryan O’Reilly is a cancer who swallowed the Sabres and is swallowing the Blues” and saying “Jason Botterill decided he had a better chance of making the changes he wanted to make in the Sabres’ culture with O’Reilly gone.”

Sometimes people just aren’t the right fit for the role they are in.

It is interesting how people are focusing on O’Reilly for the change in the two team’s fortunes when a far more likely catalyst is Hutton.

 

1 hour ago, Thorny said:

An excellent point, and not just because of what Hutton brings to the on-ice table. 

There is more going on with Blues than the goalie. Outside O'Reilly, all the guys they brought in are playing sub-par. The Dmen are almost all down #'s wise. The Coach was fired.

Hutton only played 32 games last year. It must be Chad Johnson's fault, lol. We'll see soon enough if Anaheim derails and St. Louis rebounds.

Does anyone remember a couple years ago when Toronto had some discipline problems with a player? I think it was late for practices or similar thing and said player was disciplined, was that Bozak or someone else?

[dudacek]

35 minutes ago, MakeSabresGrr8Again said:

 

There is more going on with Blues than the goalie. Outside O'Reilly, all the guys they brought in are playing sub-par. The Dmen are almost all down #'s wise. The Coach was fired.

Hutton only played 32 games last year. It must be Chad Johnson's fault, lol. We'll see soon enough if Anaheim derails and St. Louis rebounds.

Sure, but he was 17/7/3 with the best stats in hockey.

Last year Allen was a game under Deluca .500 with horrible numbers.

Hutton was the difference between them making the playoffs or not.

[MakeSabresGrr8Again]

7 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Sure, but he was 17/7/3 with the best stats in hockey.

Last year Allen was a game under Deluca .500 with horrible numbers.

Hutton was the difference between them making the playoffs or not.

Wasn't saying that's not a part of it ...just saying that there has to be more reasons for their fall. Almost everyone on the team not named O'Reilly is having slightly or more production loss. That's not on the goalie alone. Doesn't help for sure.

[Drunkard]

16 hours ago, MakeSabresGrr8Again said:

Wrong way to look at the $$$$ and the whole trade for that matter.

Berglund and Sobotka's contracts will end before O'Reilly's. Ryan will get about $38M 'til then as compared to Berg and Vlad getting about $23M. Throw in TT at $2M for current contract (who knows if he even be around after that or how much on next contract....so far he doesn't have much bargaining power) and that brings us near $25M. That leaves about $13M to replace them with in the future for a couple years, and that's not to mention that we also got a 1st rd and a 2nd rd pick.

Right now the production we had hoped for (which wasn't allot) still can possibly be obtained or nearly. The picks and TT are the possible coups. Money will likely be spared at least for awhile. Cost controlled players will be coming in to replace them (Berg/Vlad).

 

It's not the wrong way to look at the money at all. The biggest difference is O'Reilly will likely produce enough to justify his contract for the entire duration because he's a good player and it ends when he's 32. Berglund and Sobotka are ALREADY not producing enough to justify their pay, they are both in their 30's and it's only going to get worse, especially for Berglund because we're stuck with him for another 3 crappy years after this crappy year. O'Reilly 3 and 4 years from now will likely still be producing more than both of these bums combined. Sure Sobotka will be off the books by then, but that added cap flexibility isn't worth the downgrade in talent and production.

 

 

[Eleven]

On 12/9/2018 at 6:42 PM, Sabel79 said:

I swear, ROR is actually Cousin Oliver.  

I actually had a telephone conversation with Robbie Rist (the actor who played him) once.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

1 minute ago, Eleven said:

I actually had a telephone conversation with Robbie Rist (the actor who played him) once.

What was he arrested for?

[Randall Flagg]

On 12/11/2018 at 1:33 PM, darksabre said:

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

 

On 12/11/2018 at 2:29 PM, 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. 

You're just saying two different things with these two different posts. The point I'm arguing with is what has been insinuated in the first one, and is the only time I'll ever actively make posts about the topic. 

And it was laughable because your first take, six games in, was "he's not doing anything and they're losing." Well, once he became a positive player on a -15 team, with positive possession numbers despite his team being very negative, and an awesome stat line compared to that franchise's center history, you had to shift to "well, they're still losing and you're wrong for claiming that we don't have proof whatsoever, he's a locker room problem, that's where it is since he's been excellent where the hockey actually happens." Well, sorry for not realizing that your source, who for all any of us know is probably a guy named Steve who works at New Era and has been in the same room as a guy who's been in the locker room twice, was also traded to the Blues and has gotten the lowdown of their culture and what's going on, eh? I didn't hear about that part of the move. These are not the rigorous deductive tactics of someone with the goal of understanding a situation in full.

There are awesome players with awesome production on garbage teams where their "stats don't matter." In fact, on every garbage team that isn't tanking, this is the case. You've given nothing to show why ROR is a special case of this and why I should believe his presence in that locker room is causing a season whose spiral began during their 1-7-2 February stretch and 1-5-1 playoff-killing April the season before he got there. Why I can't do the same thing for OEL, Alex Barkov/Trocheck/Huberdeau, for Larkin, for anyone on a ***** team with obvious reasons for their problems that aren't those guys. Or even guys like Carter, who have tangible rumors that come from things that aren't tea-leaves reading of locker room quotes and a whisper about ROR getting drunk in Vegas like everyone else did this year without him. Will Ryan never exist on another playoff hockey team? That's a pretty ridiculous bet, and it'd be even more ridiculous to pin this is a reason why. With actual context to your brushing off, his "meaningless stats" were a part of Colorado's best regular season since they were loaded with HHOFers, their only playoffs in a fairly large stretch, and the absence of his "meaningless stats" almost immediately led to the worst non-expansion-team season in NHL history. Furthermore, context shows that his nothing stats helped the Sabres to a 27 point improvement after a tank season. The variables that affected the two seasons after are countless, there are too many to name, and the whole thing just looks lazy. 

You've got nothing and pretending you have something that excuses any attempt to meaningfully analyze even a single part of their entire franchise (goaltending would be a beauty place to start considering what I've shown would happen if you gave this team Lehner and Johnson last year), even giving vibes of being proud not to have to do that, when taking a simple step back shows how ludicrous it is to do so (I know Doohickie has stories of how defensive Blues fans get when he broaches the subject, but I've seen those interactions, and could not have read them more differently, and more broadly Sabres fans essentially get made fun of for trying this ***** by even neutral fans over there on the mains) is just weak sauce, and I'd expect better from those among us so cultured as to read Dostoevsky instead of bothering with the plebeian Bills.

Still waiting for the mechanism, btw, by which his mere presence can make bad goalies play bad and Petro ***** his pants every other shift, and have been since July 

Edited December 13, 2018 by Randall Flagg

[Randall Flagg]

On 12/11/2018 at 2:44 PM, Thorny said:

In fairness to the discussion and my bringing up of Occam's Razor: ROR may have asked to be traded. 

It's possible. In a league where I read while on the shitter that Duchene asked to be traded, I'd be thrilled for any sort of substance. That is not a very good application of Occam's Razor though, which requires the simplest possible explanation that can be shown, which IMO, is not that ROR "was a cancer" but that a last place locker room needed a shakeup, and the best piece to do it would be the old guy with a decent-sized cap hit.

On 12/11/2018 at 2:22 PM, Thorny said:

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. 

You wouldn't risk subbing out worse-than-tank-seasons center depth for a guy who can do 60 points with the most defensive usage in forward history? Because his surly brow might have made Eichel sadder during the win streak and thereby kill the win streak? 



 

[Thorner]

8 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

It's possible. In a league where I read while on the shitter that Duchene asked to be traded, I'd be thrilled for any sort of substance. That is not a very good application of Occam's Razor though, which requires the simplest possible explanation that can be shown, which IMO, is not that ROR "was a cancer" but that a last place locker room needed a shakeup, and the best piece to do it would be the old guy with a decent-sized cap hit.

You wouldn't risk subbing out worse-than-tank-seasons center depth for a guy who can do 60 points with the most defensive usage in forward history? Because his surly brow might have made Eichel sadder during the win streak and thereby kill the win streak? 



 

No, of course I would not. Would Botterill? The answer is the same.

You don't have to accept that Botterill is right, but you might as well accept that he values the off-ice/locker room dynamic more than you do. The condescending tone of the last sentence of the bolded is rather obnoxious given that you are basically mocking the decision of the guy who has a lot more variables in the equation filled in than you do. 

It's not ridiculous to not want ROR back no matter how much you personally disagree with the stance. 

Edited December 13, 2018 by Thorny

[Randall Flagg]

7 minutes ago, Thorny said:

No, of course I would not. Would Botterill? The answer is the same.

You don't have to accept that Botterill is right, but you might as well accept that he values the off-ice/locker room dynamic more than you do. The condescending tone of the last sentence of the bolded is rather obnoxious given that you are basically mocking the decision of the guy who has a lot more variables in the equation filled in than you do. 

It's not ridiculous to not want ROR back no matter how much you personally disagree with the stance. 

Here's the thing though. You guys are all working on a postulate that Botterill wanted to trade Ryan because he felt Ryan was a problem in the locker room. Well maybe not you, but that is a clear and repeatedly articulated stance. But it's fundamentally different from so many other hockey takes, including locker room culture takes. Because in the NHL these exist with far more evidence than we've been given in this instance, and the conclusions that get drawn in those situations are exponentially less far-reaching than the Blues locker room nonsense that you might not be saying but that is the stuff that's making me even bother to reply. Because if you notice, I'm never the guy to bring this up, but I'm always the guy to jump in when things depart from the ground.

I can make an equally valid postulate with sound reasoning and equal evidence: Terry Pegula does not like when guys make his teams look bad. We've read whispers of this, in more substantiated form (about Kane, in I think TBN?) than anything that's ever been in print on Ryan ("vortex of sadness" is the best I've ever seen, and it was based off of locker room interviews and the obvious observation that ROR was sad that the Sabres were bad). Terry did not like ROR driving through a Tim Hortons, and said to Jason, since stuff needs to change, let that guy be the change. Supporting evidence: None, but in the vein of "things that could have happened so why not, they did," that Jason spent a full calendar year discussing the importance of center depth and mentioning Jack and ROR by name as being incredibly lucky to be set like that there. It's certainly a supporting observation.

But I would never put this out there the same way the cancer thing is put out there, because I see it as what it is. An idea that probably has some parts of it true (in the same way needing a locker room shakeup this past offseason is almost certainly true) with a conclusion that gets phrased repeatedly (and with snark, hell hath no fury like a Buffalo fan to a guy that used to be a Sabre but isn't now) as necessarily following, but doesn't actually logically follow using any sort of evidence we actually have. 

This distinction between ROR's locker room "evidence" literally stemming from tuning into interviews and making projections, and locker room evidence that actually gets put out in the spotlight, like, really goddamn easily in this league, is completely ignored here and ONLY here. If you've noticed, I throw a lot of words at things that I think need more scrutiny than are getting, and that's what's going on here. 

I know what freaking drugs Jeff Carter and Mike Richards like to use. I know who Duchene would and wouldn't talk to after his trade request while still playing on the team weeks, skipping training camp. I don't even care to know this stuff, it just made itself known. And if people only said "damn dude blow this core up cuz it didn't work, and ROR, you're 28 or whatever, see ya buddy we'll use that money on younger players" I'd literally never post about ROR again, but people think that's the same thing as "You're just mad that it's true that ROR is a malaise on the St. Louis Blues because of who he is as a human being." 

[Thorner]

Except it's not an equally valid postulate. 

Botterill actively made the trade. The default (and most likely) notion is that he wanted to.

You have to make an extra logical leap, no matter how plausible, to "someone made him do it". 

[Sabres Fan in NS]

22 hours ago, New Scotland (NS) said:

What was he arrested for?

Hey Taro,

Glad you got my attempt at humour here.

I really thought this would get more play, but one really needs to know what our beloved Eleven does for a living in the real world.  Oh, well.

[nfreeman]

@Randall Flagg — FFS, take it down a notch.  Thorny is right about your tone.  

Again — we are never going to get the “evidence” you are demanding for the locker room cancer theory.  We also aren’t ever going scientifically test the theory where we hold all other critical variables (and you are certainly right that goaltending is one of them) constant.  That doesn’t mean people aren’t allowed to believe the theory.  You’re right that we shouldn’t be throwing it around like it’s a settled fact, but I don’t think anyone is doing that.  

In conclusion, ROR is a locker room cancer.

 

[Samson's Flow]

I don't have a horse in this argument, but I just want to say that @Randall Flagg should at least be getting a multiplier on the post count for some of these responses. He'd be up in Dark territory by pure word count.

(This is a compliment by the way - right or wrong more folks here should be willing to defend their position with such comprehensiveness) 

[Marions Piazza]

lot's of heated debate for a guy that's not even a Sabre anymore

[jsb]

1 hour ago, nfreeman said:

@Randall Flagg — FFS, take it down a notch.  Thorny is right about your tone.  

In conclusion, ROR is a locker room cancer.

 

The man is back

22 minutes ago, Samson's Flow said:

I don't have a horse in this argument, but I just want to say that @Randall Flagg should at least be getting a multiplier on the post count for some of these responses. He'd be up in Dark territory by pure word count.

(This is a compliment by the way - right or wrong more folks here should be willing to defend their position with such comprehensiveness) 

IMO he'd be smokin' Dark

Edited December 13, 2018 by jsb
I didn't mean that the way it sounds Dark