Trade: Ryan O'Reilly to St Louis Blues

[Doohicksie]

11 minutes ago, Marions Piazza said:

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

You should see how heated it got over on the Blues forum when I tried to present a Sabres fan perspective.  ?

[GASabresIUFAN]

7 minutes ago, Doohickie said:

You should see how heated it got over on the Blues forum when I tried to present a Sabres fan perspective.  ?

You challenged their belief they won the trade, despite the opposite directions of the teams in the standings.  Although losing Hutton to is didn’t help either.

Edited December 13, 2018 by GASabresIUFAN

[Wyldnwoody44]

If the Sabres win the cup this year or soon, I still believe that this argument will still stand, it will stand the test of time, this argument is essentially a cockroach. 

 

I mean, don't stop guys, I am enjoying reading it, but I fear that Randall may have a stroke 

[Marions Piazza]

12 minutes ago, Wyldnwoody44 said:

If the Sabres win the cup this year or soon, I still believe that this argument will still stand, it will stand the test of time, this argument is essentially a cockroach. 

 

I mean, don't stop guys, I am enjoying reading it, but I fear that Randall may have a stroke 

I have only been around these boards maybe a year or so, how long did it take before the losses of Drury and Briere stopped being lamented?

[Taro T]

25 minutes ago, Marions Piazza said:

I have only been around these boards maybe a year or so, how long did it take before the losses of Drury and Briere stopped being lamented?

We'll let you know should that come to pass. ;)

[Wyldnwoody44]

11 minutes ago, Taro T said:

We'll let you know should that come to pass. ?

Yes, I 2nd this ??

[WildCard]

8 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

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 

What does enjoying Russian lit have to do with hockey lol

[darksabre]

8 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

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." 

I have no idea what you're trying to say. 

[darksabre]

8 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

 

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 

Sure I do. I just can't really talk about it and I can't give you anything to analyze.

ROR was a problem. He just was. I called it before his trade that Botterill was looking to move guys for reasons that didn't make sense on paper, and I was right.

Because I drink, and I know things. 

Sorry I can't give you something to analyze to death. 

[WildCard]

You're never going to find a smoking gun in a situation like this. We can only go with what we have, and to me that points to O'Reilly being an issue for a team

[darksabre]

1 minute ago, WildCard said:

You're never going to find a smoking gun in a situation like this. We can only go with what we have, and to me that points to O'Reilly being an issue for a team

Right. There is no smoking gun. Simply an accrual of anecdotal information over time that lead to a predicted outcome. 

If people don't want to take my word for it, then that's fine. I'm not going to waste time debating it. 

[Sabres Fan in NS]

I am this close to dispatching a NS ground and sea search party to Nebraska.  Randall is (not) surprisingly MIA.

[Samson's Flow]

6 minutes ago, darksabre said:

Sure I do. I just can't really talk about it and I can't give you anything to analyze.

ROR was a problem. He just was. I called it before his trade that Botterill was looking to move guys for reasons that didn't make sense on paper, and I was right.

Because I drink, and I know things. 

Sorry I can't give you something to analyze to death. 

I have heard enough of these types of grapevine stories to believe a trend, which has satisfied my curiosity on the ROR trade front. 

[dudacek]

Is it possible that Jack and Ryan didn’t have issues with each other AND that Ryan’s departure has helped facilitate Jack’s current ascendancy as both a player and a leader?

Botterill created a vacuum and Jack filled it?

[Marions Piazza]

4 minutes ago, WildCard said:

You're never going to find a smoking gun in a situation like this. We can only go with what we have, and to me that points to O'Reilly being an issue for a team

we may however, be able to find a "smocking gun"

[Samson's Flow]

5 minutes ago, Marions Piazza said:

we may however, be able to find a "smocking gun"

Bravo!

Edited December 13, 2018 by Samson's Flow

[LGR4GM]

St Louis has bad goaltending. The issues with the team start there. 

[darksabre]

Just now, dudacek said:

Is it possible that Jack and Ryan didn’t have issues with each other AND that Ryan’s departure has helped facilitate Jack’s current ascendancy as both a player and a leader?

Botterill created a vacuum and Jack filled it?

I've said before that, anecdotally, ROR had issues with Jack, but Jack didn't have any with ROR. It was a one way street. I've wondered, but never sought confirmation, if situation was similar between ROR and other players on the team. I will be interested to hear if similar stories start coming out of St. Louis. 

I do think it was important to make room for Jack to take over control of the team. 

[Taro T]

8 minutes ago, darksabre said:

I've said before that, anecdotally, ROR had issues with Jack, but Jack didn't have any with ROR. It was a one way street. I've wondered, but never sought confirmation, if situation was similar between ROR and other players on the team. I will be interested to hear if similar stories start coming out of St. Louis. 

I do think it was important to make room for Jack to take over control of the team.

Which could very well have a grain of truth to it.

On paper, the Bills losing Devlin &  Smerlas to Plan B should have been a negative; but those guys being gone allowed the team to truly become Kelly's team.  Sent them on to 4 consecutive Superbowls.

[Doohicksie]

2 hours ago, Taro T said:

We'll let you know should that come to pass. ?

It went pretty quickly from Black Sunday > Rotten Core > Tank > Reinhart + Eichel + Mitts + Dahlin.  The lamentation has been pretty continuous up until the 10-game win streak this year.

Edited December 13, 2018 by Doohickie

[TrueBlueGED]

5 hours ago, WildCard said:

You're never going to find a smoking gun in a situation like this. We can only go with what we have, and to me that points to O'Reilly being an issue for a team

But I think Flagg's point is we get concrete information in these situations all the time. He gave specific examples. Outside of those things we had specifics on Kane in Winnipeg, Hoffman in Ottawa, Richard's and Carter in Philly. Yet somehow the problems with O'Reilly were so severe that we had to move him, yet we know more about aliens landing in Roswell than what was going on in the locker room. I don't think it's crazy to be skeptical. 

[darksabre]

4 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

But I think Flagg's point is we get concrete information in these situations all the time. He gave specific examples. Outside of those things we had specifics on Kane in Winnipeg, Hoffman in Ottawa, Richard's and Carter in Philly. Yet somehow the problems with O'Reilly were so severe that we had to move him, yet we know more about aliens landing in Roswell than what was going on in the locker room. I don't think it's crazy to be skeptical. 

We really don't though. There is SOOOOO much more going on than we could ever hope to hear about. There is sooo much stuff that teams and reporters and players keep quiet. Those examples are, like, the tip of the iceberg. 

[That Aud Smell]

5 hours ago, dudacek said:

Is it possible that Jack and Ryan didn’t have issues with each other AND that Ryan’s departure has helped facilitate Jack’s current ascendancy as both a player and a leader?

Botterill created a vacuum and Jack filled it?

This makes sense.

5 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

St Louis has bad goaltending. The issues with the team start there. 

As does this.

[Cheektorado]

Honestly, who misses those "ROR Speedwagon" interviews?

"Byls, I can't fight this feeling anymore...............I've forgotten what I started playing for..............".

Both sides are better off now.

 

 

 

 

 

[pi2000]

https://www.nhl.com/blues/video/dec-1-postgame-interviews/t-277517826/c-63589903