Ryan O'Reilly The Perfect Fit At The Perfect Time For Maple Leafs
Breaking Down A Blockbuster Trade In The NHL...
Trust the Toronto Maple Leafs to launch a Hail Mary late on a Friday night. Is Ryan O’Reilly really the answer to all their prayers, though?
It is a tale as old as time. The Leafs bludgeoning their way through the regular season only to choke and fall at the first hurdle in the Playoffs. For all their star power, for all their skill, for all their finesse, the one consistent slur thrown at this franchise is they are not tough enough to survive when it comes to postseason hockey.
They have all the style but lack in the substance department. They have the talent needed to navigate an 82-game regular season schedule, but not the toughness of character that is required to endure in a mentally gruelling survival of the fittest type contest that is the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Year after year we all have the same discussion about the Maple Leafs. And yet, nothing seems to ever change. The Toronto heriachy seem so set in their ways and are so stubbornly determined to stick to their script. Despite the fact their methods have continued to deliver embarrassing postseason failure after embarrassing postseason failure. The front office has just refused to adapt and change course.
As the great Bill Parcells once said, you are what your record says you are. And, until the Leafs show us they are equipped to thrive in the postseason, we will continue to write them off and doubt their overall philosophy.
Until now, perhaps.
If you missed it, the Leafs pulled the trigger on a monster of a trade late Friday night. And it was a three-team trade - the best kind of trade for those of us who love a little bit of chaos in our lives.
This was how it went down:
Toronto Maple Leafs acquires: Ryan O’Reilly, Noel Acciari and Josh Pillar
St. Louis Blues acquires: Mikhail Abramov, Adam Gaudette, 2023 1st Round Pick, 2023 3rd Round Pick, 2024 Second Round Pick. St. Louis also retains 50% of O’Reilly’s contract.
Minnesota Wild acquires: 2025 4th Round Pick. Minnesota also retains 25% of O’Reilly’s contract.
There’s a lot to unpack from this deal, and we’ll get into the Acciari portion of it later because that’s a really underrated part of the whole trade.
But O’Reilly was the crowning glory of this hugely significant transaction and that’s where we’re going to lead off.
Now, there’s a couple of things worth noting here. Firstly, the Leafs are only going to have to pay a chunk of O’Reilly’s $7.5 million annual average salary with both the Blues and the Wild retaining salary. Secondly, O’Reilly isn’t the elite top-line center he was in 2019 when he led the Blues to the Stanley Cup.
The grizzled veteran was at the very peak of his powers during that run, averaging 21:24 minutes of total ice time during the postseason and recording 12 points (seven goals, five assists) with 11 blocked shots, 10 hits and a 54.6% winning percentage in the faceoff circle. His heroic, historic efforts to help lead the Blues past the Boston Bruins in seven games earned him the Conn Smythe Trophy.
Recently, it has been a different story for O’Reilly, however. The Blues are now paying the tab for that championship and are seemingly on the cusp of a rebuild having also dealt Vladimir Tararsenko to the New York Rangers earlier this month. With St. Louis falling further and further out of contention this year, it shouldn’t be surprising that O’Reilly’s game has also suffered and regressed as a direct result.
Through 40 games this season, the pivot has 19 points (12 goals, seven assists) with a +/- minute rating of -24. He’s averaging just 18:24 of ice time per night and a broken foot that made him miss six weeks of action has hardly helped matters.
Effectively, the Leafs are acquiring damaged goods right now and O’Reilly’s stock is at an all-time low. He certainly wasn’t viewed as the sexiest or flashiest option available at the Trade Deadline for teams looking for a piece to help put them over the top.
However, and this next point is incredibly important, O’Reilly is exactly what Toronto needs right now. Sure, there were probably more attractive, more jaw-dropping options out there but, for where this team is right now and given their alarming recent history in the postseason, O’Reilly is the perfect fit.
The Maple Leafs need to slay their playoff demons. O’Reilly is the ideal candidate to help do that.
Leafs General Manager Kyle Dubas will hope that his newest addition can benefit from a fresh start and get back to the kind of player we’ve been used to watching for more than a decade. The good news is that he recorded three points in his first three games back from that broken foot.
It wasn’t like O’Reilly completely stunk the place out this year, either. He was winning 54.1% of his draws, he blocked 21 shots, ammassed 13 hits and had 36 Takeaways. Plus, if you pop up the hood and study some of the underlying metrics, they paint the picture that O’Reilly has still been an impactful player this year and he’s created chances at a high rate.
And that’s exactly the point. Sure, O’Reilly alone probably won’t be enough to bridge the gap between making the Playoffs and going on to lift the Stanley Cup. The Leafs are going to have to make other moves before the Trade Deadline if they are to make a deep run. Improving the goaltending should be a priority.
But, what O’Reilly will do is get you that little bit closer. And that should be good enough for Toronto right now. You can’t expect to run before you’ve even taken your first step and this team needs to focus on getting out of the First Round before they dream of anything else.
Toronto, all skill and very little substance, collapse like a cheap pack of cards as soon as they sniff the postseason. It happens every year without fail. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
They haven’t won a Playoff series since 2004. Just think about that.
O’Reilly should at the very least change the dynamic inside that locker room. He’s a gamer, he’s a leader, and he’s as high character a individual as you will find in hockey. The veteran boasts all the intangibles needed to be successful in this game and he’ll demand the best from those around him. He’ll drive up the standard in Toronto and that is no bad thing. Especially come Playoff time.
When you look at what the Maple Leafs have been missing in the postseason, they now get all of that with O’Reilly. He’s a hard-edged, hard-nosed player that can play hard in the corners, he’ll get to the dirty areas, he’ll battle as hard as anyone in-front of the net, he plays a true 200-foot game and he has a special, instinctive talent when it comes to getting his stick on the ice in the right place at exactly the right time to break up a play.
He back-checks willingly and there’s a reason he’s always in the conversation for the Selke Trophy. He’s a high-end, defensive two-way center. There’s more. O’Reilly can be used on the penalty kill - Toronto ranks 13th in the NHL (80.6) in that department - he’ll be a nice weapon on the power play, and he’s an absolute dominant one-man machine inside the faceoff circle. The 32-year-old owns a career 55.7% mark inside the dot, and it hasn’t fallen below 55.0% in each of his last seven full seasons.
Offensively, O’Reilly has reached the 20-goal threshold six times in his career and he’s recorded at least 30 assists in each of his last nine seasons. While he isn’t what he used to be production wise, he did put up 58 points (21 goals, 37 assists) just as recently as last year. He’ll still be able to be valuable to Toronto in that regard, too.
There’s also the experience factor. Yes, we do tend to place a lot of emphasis on the whole been there, done it and got the t-shirt argument in sports. But you can’t place a price on owning the knowledge of what it takes to get to the mountain top in your profession. O’Reilly has that proud distinction. As already mentioned, he put the Blues on his back and, at times, dragged them to winning the Stanley Cup in 2019.
During that run, O’Reilly broke the franchise record for most points in a single postseason (23). He set the tone by scoring the first goal in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, and he also added an assist later in the contest. He became the first player since the great Wayne Gretzky in 1985 to score in four straight Final games. That’s the very definition of clutch.
O’Reilly knows what is required in order to reach the promised land. He’s well aware of the personal sacrifices required, he knows how to play through the pain barrier night after night after night. And he’s lived through the process of surviving a gruelling war of attrition that results in glory.
When it comes to Playoff time, O’Reilly has shown he can elevate his game to another level and really lock in. That attitude and that mentality has been missing in the Maple Leafs locker room but their newest addition will make sure those qualities, those intangibles are the first boxes to be ticked before battle commences.
There’s much more balance to this Toronto lineup now. O’Reilly could slot into the top-six as a center or slide out to the wing, or he could anchor the third-line and give the Maple Leafs one of the deepest and most talented center groups in the entire National Hockey League. Whether he’s adding real depth to that bottom-six or forming part of a mouthwatering line with John Tavares and Mitchell Marner, O’Reilly will make this Leafs team a lot better.
And that’s where Acciari enters the frame. A career bottom-six grinder, Acciari has built a career based off being reliable, dependable and tough. He’ll win you faceoffs, he’ll answer the bell for a teammate if needed to and he’ll throw the body around and give his team a spark of energy. Plus, don’t sleep on the veteran offensively. He had 18 points (10 goals, eight assists) in 54 games for the Blues this season, and he put up 27 points (20 goals, seven assists) for the Florida Panthers as recently as the 2019-20 season.
Acciari will be able to provide the Maple Leafs with an offensive punch and some secondary scoring from a bottom-six role. He was a really nice added bonus in this trade.
Now, going forward, the Leafs have Auston Matthews, Tavares, O’Reilly, Acciari and David Kämpf who can all win faceoffs. They now have real nice depth down the middle and they have an abundance of options when it comes to the power play and the penalty kill. The additions of O’Reilly and Acciari just gives Head Coach Sheldon Keefe so much more lineup flexibility.
Did the Maple Leafs give up too much for O’Reilly? Hell yeah they did. Dubas basically leveraged the franchise’s future for what is effectively another win-now move. O’Reilly is a pure rental given that he’s a free agent after this year and giving up a bounty of picks is a big risk if O’Reilly walks in the summer and / or Toronto flames out in the First Round of the Playoffs again.
Interesting note - O’Reilly was born in Clinton, Ontario so there is every chance he would be open to extending his stay in Toronto.
This can’t be the final move either. We’ve already discussed that. O’Reilly alone won’t carry Toronto to the Stanley Cup. Not this version of O’Reilly anyway. But, what he will do is bring a boatload of leadership, experience, character, intangibles and two-way prowess to this Maple Leafs team. He proudly carries the scars - and a ring - of a lengthy and successful postseason run and he’s exactly what the Leafs needed right now.
Whether it pays off remains to be seen. But it is a start. And it is a very good start at that.
