Hi Ladies! Thanks for making the pod, I always enjoy it :) I do actually have a question - is Ryan O'Reilly cursed? Whenever I look up the Blues to see how he's doing, it turns out they've given up five goals to Laine or fired their coach or some other traumatic storyline. Is it normal for a player to switch teams three times and never experience joy?
Thanks for the support and sorry we missed answering your question on the pod! (Ironically, he did come up in our convo before recording). Since we’re taking a break from recording until after the hecticness of finals and the first half of December, we’ll answer this one digitally. Under the cut because we’re wordy bitches here.
Maia (I got here first and got all the low-hanging fruit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯):
Ryan O’Reilly, to say the least, is a very interesting man.
Both of his trades have been seen as foolhardy to the team trading him. It wasn’t so long ago that Sabres fans (us included) were laughing at the Avs for trading such a good player… only to stand in their place not a mere three seasons later coming to full realization (with St. Louis fans laughing at us).
When a player is traded twice in the span of 3 years despite putting up good points and being a solid 1-2 center, a faceoff machine, and quite defensively sound, that’s never a good sign. The question at that point falls not on a player’s production, but their character.
Now ROR is hardly a horrible person – not by a longshot. He’s actually a really nice guy, but perhaps not the best team player or moral builder. We talk about this in one of our earliest episodes from the summer (1.03, judging from our old outlines), but ROR is almost always going to fill the score sheet, get the assists, get the goals. The trade of ROR to St. Louis was never about the points or goals, and no matter what the Sabres were going to be losing the best player in the trade. But there’s a lot more things that make a team tick then just putting up the points; there’s also camaraderie and truly being not just a team, but a family.
That’s not to say that ROR was the sole reason for the Sabres locker room issues –that falls on a lot of players, some of whom were shipped out or left to free agency (Evander Kane, Lehner, Johnson…)– nor is it to say that shipping ROR solved all the problems (that would unfairly erase all the work the remaining players did over the summer and in pre-season with communication, opening up to each other, working to hold each other accountable). But there’s no denying that the ROR trade was first and foremost, a character move.
It’s hard to gauge how much of the whole ROR vs Eichel thing was true –Jack certainly denies it (as heard on Spittin Chiclets)– but there had to have been a grain of truth in there somewhere. Think of it this way, ROR was brought into the organization only slightly before Jack, he was hailed as a leader. He was expected to be. Jack was too, perhaps, in his own way, but he had quite a bit of growing up to do first. Fast forward to the point where Jack truly starts to mature, he has an A, Brian Gionta is gone and so is the C…
That creates a vacuum, and while it’s always good to have players step up… there’s a difference between stepping up and stepping on toes, and maybe there was a bit of stepping on toes there. Trading ROR eliminates that issue, the locker room and the team is Jack’s to have. So many things changed in the off-season that it’s difficult to pin down exactly what the biggest game changer was (it’s all of them, honestly), but there’s no denying the importance of handing the reins over fully to a young, eager core just bursting at the seams to finally prove itself.
ROR was hard on himself and the team — both good traits to have, but in moderation; he’d still have the downtrodden attitude after good games and wins (despite their rarity). And again, there’s a difference between realism, humbleness, and being a constant downer. As much as GMBOT and co claim that ROR’s locker cleanout comments of “losing the love of the game” and etc didn’t affect their choice to trade him, they certainly did make it a lot easier to do so. The Sabres core needed to be desperately shaken up, and ROR was a very ready choice, esp after saying that. There is that argument that ROR at 27 fell just outside the “young core” Botts is building between 18-23, but then again, Jeff Skinner is 26. (But look at Skinner: what does he bring along with his production? Positivity, hard work, good locker room presence).
We haven’t really been following ROR’s track all that closely on the Blues. He’s putting up the points, for sure, but the Blues? Not so hot. The Sabres surely thought that the 1st rounder they received for him would be a late first rounder, but it’s looking more and more to be a high pick. So who knows, maybe ROR is cursed, but it’s interesting how the Blues have fallen since their acquirement of him.
To answer your question though: Is it normal for a player to switch teams three times and never experience joy?
Maybe, it just depends on the player. Don’t think Matt Duchene is exactly having a blast either
Meghan here;
Going off of what Maia said earlier, I think it was pretty obvious that there was tension in the locker room. If you ask me, I think it was in regards to leadership. Jack was being primed to be The Leader™ in the locker room; he was the youngest player who had the A, guys often commented on how they needed him (especially when he was out for those 4 weeks with an ankle injury), etc. It’s also rumored (and I don’t know how credible this is, so take it with a grain of salt) that he was traded from Colorado in the first place because he and Duchene were feuding for leadership in the locker room as well.
Now, I do want to stress that wanting to be a leader in the locker room isn’t a fundamentally bad trait. We all know this, but I want to put it on the record. However, it is a bad trait when you aren’t able to lead with another person/people. If that’s the case with ROR, then…that’s toxic. Is ROR a toxic person? I doubt it. I’m sure that, had he not had his struggles with leadership, he would have been a great resource both in and out of the locker room. But, as we can clearly see, he did have those problems.
So, to restate what Maia said, I also believe that this was a character move. Something I think a lot of people tend to ignore is that you can have all the talent in the world, but if your locker room is toxic? If your players are warring behind the scenes, if your players can’t get along? That talent doesn’t matter. Ultimately, I believe there were a lot of different reasons why the Sabres were garbage last year, and toxicity in the locker room was, in my opinion, one of the biggest.
To actually answer your question: no, I don’t think ROR is “cursed”. However, I think he just has a mixture of extremely bad luck to get traded to teams headed towards the bottom, and his attitude probably doesn’t help.
Cassie:
I don’t think ROR is cursed, but I don’t think he’s great for a locker room. Moving him was not a product of his production but more of a need for a culture change. If all you’re exposed to is someone that is down and depressed, eventually that rubs off. Unless ROR has changed his stripes, it’s unlikely that his aura has changed. It’s possible that the negative aura is tainting the Blues, but it’s also possible that the Blues are just bad. They were trending downward last season and it’s possible that it has continued. The Blues have a CF%/60 of 50.56 and a CA%/60 of 45.46. I’d believe that these are impacted and look better than they actually are because of ROR’s production. Overall, it’s just a bad team getting even worse goaltending. Oddly, they’re missing Hutton more so than benefiting from ROR. I think with ROR it’s a situation where he’s gone from team to team to team and have caught all three teams in a downslide. Combine that with him taking things too hard on himself it’s a toxic situation. I really hope he seeks out a sports psychologist because it would do wonders on his outlook.