The ROR trade sucked thread

[PromoTheRobot]

Coaching. Coaching, coaching, coaching. And furthermore...coaching.

[...]

The Paul Maurice interview by WGR 550 has shed light on this, I think.  The reasons for wanting to trade ROR was "the locker room", we believe he wanted out of here anyway, and, my belief is that the Pegulas never forgave him for the Timmy Ho's incident (it seems any player on either the Sabres or Bills who takes it "too far" in the public eye gets removed from their respective teams prematurely).

Anyway, Maurice indicated there isn't a traditional team atmosphere in locker rooms now, not the kind us middle-aged and beyond fans think of, at least.  He said each person is an individual production. I wonder what was really going on in that locker room, now, as I ponder the kind of person (or people) Maurice is talking about.  I wonder if, since this is (apparently) the reality, if Botterill really thought removing a guy would clean up the locker room and lead to fixing the problems with the team.  

I guess I'd like to think that Botterill was against the idea, but his hand was forced by the Pegulas. 

[7+6=13]

I stand by ROR needed to go.  He's on a team that doesn't need him to be a leader on and off the ice - we did.  

 

[Drunkard]

6 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:

Course it was a bad trade, but he didn't have a choice. ROR wanted out and that was the best deal he could get before that signing bonus kicked in (which was an issue that came down from the top I am sure). 

I am personally more concerned over how less than stellar Eichel and Reinhart have looked (overall) at the worlds. If Skinner doesn't sign those are our so called young stars and there are quite a few guys from other teams out there looking much better. 

He did have a choice. O'Reilly was under contract. It doesn't matter if he wanted to be traded because it wasn't up to him and even if he did demand to be traded he didn't make it public. Duchene wanted to be traded and it was already public knowledge but Colorado refused to just accept the best crappy offer available. They made him suck it up until Colorado got the return they desired. The artificial timeline killed it and even if it came from Terry and Kim, Botterill should have explained that to them and convinced them to take a longer view.

[jahnyc]

I do not know what the underlying locker-room dynamics may or may not have been, but the trade, in terms of value received in return, was awful.  Not only because we received almost no contributions from the players acquired, but also for the bad contracts that were part of the package back to us.  I think we were lucky that Berglund walked away, and, as a result, we received significant cap savings.  He would have been way overpaid for a fourth line player.  We still have one more year of Sobotka at $3.5 million and Berglund would have cost us $3.85 million per year in cap space through 2021-22 if he had continued to play for the Sabres.  This was a poor deal based solely on the contracts we acquired as part of the trade.

One open question is how much of an impact the team's reluctance to pay O'Reilly his bonus had in the making of this particular trade and the value that we could have received in return from the Blues or other teams if we were willing to pay the bonus and then trade O'Reilly.

[SDS]

1 hour ago, ... said:

The Paul Maurice interview by WGR 550 has shed light on this, I think.  The reasons for wanting to trade ROR was "the locker room", we believe he wanted out of here anyway, and, my belief is that the Pegulas never forgave him for the Timmy Ho's incident (it seems any player on either the Sabres or Bills who takes it "too far" in the public eye gets removed from their respective teams prematurely).

Anyway, Maurice indicated there isn't a traditional team atmosphere in locker rooms now, not the kind us middle-aged and beyond fans think of, at least.  He said each person is an individual production. I wonder what was really going on in that locker room, now, as I ponder the kind of person (or people) Maurice is talking about.  I wonder if, since this is (apparently) the reality, if Botterill really thought removing a guy would clean up the locker room and lead to fixing the problems with the team.  

I guess I'd like to think that Botterill was against the idea, but his hand was forced by the Pegulas. 

The higher level view of your summary is that we just don't know the real reasons (in part or in whole). The "JB is a big dummy" crowd has such a myopic, ill-informed take. The situation literally screams "more to the story", but that won't stop them from building their straw men.

[Hoss]

1 hour ago, 7+6=13 said:

I stand by ROR needed to go.  He's on a team that doesn't need him to be a leader on and off the ice - we did.  

 

I’m still mostly here but the deal needed to be better.

[R_Dudley]

4 hours ago, Weave said:

Carlo Colaiacovo tweet:

It’s crazy to think that the buffalo sabres traded this guy because he was sick of losing ?‍♂️

Absolutely love Ryan Oreilly and everything he brings to a team both on and off the ice #stlblues 

Ahh just what this thread needed a little bit of salt for that wound, now we just need to rub some dirt on it and we are all good... ?

[R_Dudley]

1 hour ago, 7+6=13 said:

I stand by ROR needed to go.  He's on a team that doesn't need him to be a leader on and off the ice - we did.  

 

That is an interesting take and reasonable point.  +1 

[Drunkard]

39 minutes ago, SDS said:

The higher level view of your summary is that we just don't know the real reasons (in part or in whole). The "JB is a big dummy" crowd has such a myopic, ill-informed take. The situation literally screams "more to the story", but that won't stop them from building their straw men.

And the JB fan boys continue to make excuses for him. He's either an idiot because he actually thought he was getting a good deal or he's a wimp because he couldn't stand up to ownership and properly inform them that how badly getting O'Reilly off the team as quickly as possible/by any means necessary would set the team back. Being that they had recently hired him to run the team he should have had the clout to make a better hockey decision. Otherwise his role is to simply execute the decisions of novice owners. It reflects poorly on him in either scenario.

[nucci]

15 hours ago, R_Dudley said:

I sure would like to know understand what really motivated the trade.

Was it that season ending interview I lost my love for hockey, did he really think he was done and that bad or did some one of the owners help make that decision ?

 

I guess we will never know but boy it sure looks like we got hornswoggled. 

My personal opinion is Pegula didn't want to pay the $7.5M  bonus

[Formerly Allan in MD]

It wasn't a trade; it was a giveaway.  Botterill has to go quite some distance to compensate for this travesty.

[Formerly Allan in MD]

3 hours ago, 7+6=13 said:

I stand by ROR needed to go.  He's on a team that doesn't need him to be a leader on and off the ice - we did.  

 

That's an interesting take.  However, you still didn't need to give away one of the better centers in the league.  The "trade" was an incompetent act.

[#freejame]

1 hour ago, nucci said:

My personal opinion is Pegula didn't want to pay the $7.5M  bonus

I would much prefer this to be the case rather than it was because of his locker clean-out comments. I think people would be hard pressed to find a professional who at some point felt they were losing the love for what they do because they had a ***** boss, a crummy project, personal situations, etc. What makes a person a professional is putting their nose down and handling their business to their best capacity anyway, which is exactly what ROR did. To me, people who wanted him gone for that reason are holding themselves to much lower standards than those around them. Not to mention those people also probably bitch about vanilla hockey player quotes and non-stop cliche. My preferred option would be the Pegulas didn’t want to have someone with a drunk driving incident on their team. With any luck they’ll confirm this someday by pulling #2 from the rafters. 

[Marvin]

I think there is a book about this trade called "Fifty Shades of Grey, Mustard Yellow, and Navy Blue" available at the naughtiest BDSM clubs locally.  I imagine it is right next to complaints about Peter McNab, Real Cloutier, Tom Barrasso, Slava Kozlov, and 1 July 2007.

<vent>

I have to say what I think of all this wallowing in self-loathing.

Can we set a time-limit on this, please?  I get it.  I hated the trade at the time.  I hate it even more now.  I also hate that people think I am going to blow them up when they see me with a beard, moustache, and turban because I am a male Sikh.  I hate that security at KBC and RWS told me they put extra people in my section because people ask for their help in killing me.

I complain about that less than people here complain about that trade.

</vent>

[bob_sauve28]

3 minutes ago, E4 ... Ke2 said:

I think there is a book about this trade called "Fifty Shades of Grey, Mustard Yellow, and Navy Blue" available at the naughtiest BDSM clubs locally.  I imagine it is right next to complaints about Peter McNab, Real Cloutier, Tom Barrasso, Slava Kozlov, and 1 July 2007.

<vent>

I have to say what I think of all this wallowing in self-loathing.

Can we set a time-limit on this, please?  I get it.  I hated the trade at the time.  I hate it even more now.  I also hate that people think I am going to blow them up when they see me with a beard, moustache, and turban because I am a male Sikh.  I hate that security at KBC and RWS told me they put extra people in my section because people ask for their help in killing me.

I complain about that less than people here complain about that trade.

</vent>

Throw Brayden McNabb on that list! 

[#freejame]

14 minutes ago, E4 ... Ke2 said:

I think there is a book about this trade called "Fifty Shades of Grey, Mustard Yellow, and Navy Blue" available at the naughtiest BDSM clubs locally.  I imagine it is right next to complaints about Peter McNab, Real Cloutier, Tom Barrasso, Slava Kozlov, and 1 July 2007.

<vent>

I have to say what I think of all this wallowing in self-loathing.

Can we set a time-limit on this, please?  I get it.  I hated the trade at the time.  I hate it even more now.  I also hate that people think I am going to blow them up when they see me with a beard, moustache, and turban because I am a male Sikh.  I hate that security at KBC and RWS told me they put extra people in my section because people ask for their help in killing me.

I complain about that less than people here complain about that trade.

</vent>

I’m sorry you have to go through ***** like this. Not only are those individuals ignorant of the Sikh religion, they are clearly ignorant of Muslims as well. I’d join you on your cloud of reefer smoke for a game any day of the week. 

[...]

26 minutes ago, #freejame said:

I’m sorry you have to go through ***** like this. Not only are those individuals ignorant of the Sikh religion, they are clearly ignorant of Muslims as well. I’d join you on your cloud of reefer smoke for a game any day of the week. 

They're traditionally into hashish and Dharma, not pot and Abrahamism, as far as I recall.  Not heard of a Muslim Sikh, but, of course, I can always learn. 

1 minute ago, ... said:

They're traditionally into hashish and Dharma, not pot and Abrahamism, as far as I recall.  Not heard of a Muslim Sikh, but, of course, I can always learn. 

Correction: In Sikhism, cannabis is generally prohibited, as are tobacco and alcohol. However, some Sikhs particularly of the Nihang community use edible cannabis in a religious context.

Interesting.

[SHAAAUGHT!!!]

Even today it looks like there are a lot of takes and opinions on this trade.  I still don't hate this trade and here's why:

1. The 2017-2018 Sabres roster was comprised of only 2.5 top 6 forwards - O'Reilly, Eichel, and Kane (who I believe has proven himself as a solid middle 6 during his tenures in Buffalo and SJ, but shouldn't be considered a top line threat anymore).  The rest was 3rd/4th line role players, guys running out contracts, and rookies trying to break into the league.  Jacob Josefson played 39 games and had 4 points.  Nick Baptiste, Scott Wilson, Jordon Nolan, Benoit Pouliot, Zemgus, and Larson didn't fair much better with a similar number of games (or more).  Pommers, Okposo, and Reinhart were pedestrian at best.  Want to throw up in your mouth a little bit?  Matt Moulson and Seth Griffith played 14 and 21 games that season, respectively.  Check out the roster and stats, it's disgusting… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9318_Buffalo_Sabres_season#Player_statistics  .We needed 3-4 top 6 forwards and didn't have the assets to get them.  The O'Reilly trade brought us 3 roster players at a similar cap hit.   Yes this cost us 1 of our 2 top 6 forwards, but who else had any trade value on that team besides Eichel?  Kane was the only one and we got a fair return there.   My main point here is this trade plugged some upcoming holes for the 2019 season while overall freeing up cap space to go make a splash in FA or with a trade (see Skinner trade)

2. The Berglund Breakdown - this was a monkey wrench thrown into Jbots plan only the Blues GM could have likely foreseen.  Berglund was not happy about being traded, was not happy about his role with the Sabres, and was not happy with being a hockey player anymore.  It appeared Jbots strategy was to pencil Berglund into the 2C role and let Middlestat develop.  If Middlestat appeared ready to handle a bigger load he could step in and provide the offensive 2C role, while Housley would be able to rely on Bergs for the defensive 2C role and a veteran presence.  Decent plan considering what they had to work with.  Unfortunately this plan burst into flames and drove straight into a ditch.  A happy Berglund would have helped this team, and his departure left a significant void - one I felt Zemgus should have stepped into.  

3. O'Reilly wanted out and didn't care about this team.   Let's face it - Ryan is a crybaby when things aren’t going well.  He cried about his contract in Colorado and forced his way out of there, he cried about the team he captained in Buffalo and forced his way out of there, and he's going to cry if/when St Louis starts to get bad.  Yes he says all the right things and is an amazing hockey player, but the guy has the constitution of 10 ply toilet paper.  Yes I am aware this is subjective, but the first 2 things actually happened so I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here.  

4. The trade worked.  Blah blah blah their record was worse, blah blah blah they only had one forward line that could score blah blah blah there coach was in over his head blah blah blah.  This is not GM mode in EA sports.  You went from a team with 2 top 6 forwards to 3.  You had a team that was actually enjoyable to watch for the first 50 games, even when they lost.  And you ended the season with a number of assets you can still use along with some cap anchors coming off the books.  Yes JBot has RFA and FA contracts to get signed, but so does almost every other GM in the league.  

5.  What does JBot have to do this off season?  Add scoring.  He can do this by signing Skinner.  I'd like to see him make an RFQ offer sheet for Marner, and if that fails go after Panarin.  Having two scoring wingers we could play with Sam and Jack will be lethal, and let's see who comes to camp ready to be a top 6er out of the Tage, Casey, Nylander group.  My guess is that Casey is coming to camp next year physically ready for the 2C role.  I'd love our top six to look like:
           a. Skinner - Jack - Sam
           b. Sheary/Okposo - Casey - Panarin/Marner
       
   This would give us 4 top 6 forwards, playing with a high potential prospect and a vet next year.   

Sorry for the long post, but I really enjoy thinking about the short-term/long-term strategies when it comes to building a team, evaluating talent, and managing salaries; and I've been stuck on this line of thinking for a while when it comes to the O'Reilly trade.  I'm curious to hear other people's opinion on it considering the points I've made.  Let me know what you think!
 

[7+6=13]

6 hours ago, Hoss said:

I’m still mostly here but the deal needed to be better.

I certainly wish it was better.  I'm just not going to torch JBot for the trade.  Every team had a shot to trade for him and that's what we got - the market spoke.  

On 4/09/18 he said "Upon self reflection, I wasn't mentally tough enough this year.  We are stuck in this mindset of being ok with losing and it creeped into myself.  I lost myself alot and just being ok with making mistakes.  It's disappointing and sad.  I lost the love of the games multiple times."

That's just not a player that you can bring back after that, IMO, and it's also a player that isn't going to get you a lot of return in the NHL.  The things he said, while I totally appreciate his honesty, is the ultimate taboo in the NHL.  

 

 

[Huckleberry]

[Kruppstahl]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but ROR seems to have re-found his love of the game in St. Louis!

It must be a miracle.

 

 

[Hoss]

13 minutes ago, Kruppstahl said:

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but ROR seems to have re-found his love of the game in St. Louis!

It must be a miracle.

 

 

This is what happens when you finally play for a team that wears the right shade of blue.

[Pimlach]

10 hours ago, 7+6=13 said:

I stand by ROR needed to go.  He's on a team that doesn't need him to be a leader on and off the ice - we did.  

 

But he is a leader for the Blues.  On and off the ice.  First guy to work, last one to leave, and the younger players know it.  

[Pimlach]

2 hours ago, 7+6=13 said:

I certainly wish it was better.  I'm just not going to torch JBot for the trade.  Every team had a shot to trade for him and that's what we got - the market spoke.  

On 4/09/18 he said "Upon self reflection, I wasn't mentally tough enough this year.  We are stuck in this mindset of being ok with losing and it creeped into myself.  I lost myself alot and just being ok with making mistakes.  It's disappointing and sad.  I lost the love of the games multiple times."

That's just not a player that you can bring back after that, IMO, and it's also a player that isn't going to get you a lot of return in the NHL.  The things he said, while I totally appreciate his honesty, is the ultimate taboo in the NHL.  

 

 

Unfortunately for us, Buffalo is not a desired location for a player that wants to win now.  Maybe someday it will be.  

Ultimate taboo?   I doubt it. People in St Louis were talking about ROR for Parayko, or Robert Thomas and and a package of picks, ...  the deal they got made them ecstatic.   What killed the trade was the salary dump.  We dumped $7M of top talent and picked  up the roughly equivalent cost in Blues junk (Berglund and Sobotka). 

Berglund was considered a guy that underachieved.  Sobotka had past his best play and going to lose his spot to the young guns the Blues are now playing.  

We got burned unless Tage and a draft pick pan out. 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Pimlach