St. Louis Blues: Almost No Way Blues Lose Ryan O’Reilly Trade

The St. Louis Blues are over the moon with how the Ryan O’Reilly trade has worked out for them. However, it points out how stubborn some fans are.

When the St. Louis Blues acquired Ryan O’Reilly in the summer of 2018, most fans were quite happy with the deal, focusing on the quality of player they were getting. Of course, you were going to have your naysayers.

When the Blues were struggling early in the season, even though O’Reilly was playing well, there were thoughts that he was the issue. Sports fans love to believe in curses and bad luck and O’Reilly had gained the reputation of being bad luck since every team he had been on seemed to improve when he left. The fact Buffalo had an excellent start to 2018-19 rubbed some sand in the wound.

However, we all know what happened after that. Buffalo tanked, the Blues won the Stanley Cup and O’Reilly won the Conn Smythe as the best player in the playoffs.

You can debate whether that award could or should have gone to someone else, but that’s not what we’re here to do right now. The fact is he won it.

O’Reilly had 28 goals and 77 points in 2018-19. Both those totals, and his assist total, either set or tied previous career highs.

In the playoffs, he added eight goals, 15 assists and 23 points. That included two game-winning goals.

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But after the fact of winning all that hardware, there were some on the Twitterverse that still insisted you had to wait and see. Winning a Stanley Cup and being voted the best player in the playoffs was not a victory for the Blues. Buffalo might still come out on top of that deal.

To be frank, I do not believe these people were even Buffalo Sabres fans. It is more likely they were fans of Blues rivals, but I do not have proof of that. Regardless, the argument was made that you have to wait to see what becomes of the draft pick.

I am here to say after two mostly completed seasons with Ryan O’Reilly as a member of the Blues, there is almost no way the Blues ever lose this deal. Yes, it is entirely possible that Ryan Johnson becomes the Tom Brady of hockey.

Maybe Johnson uses being the 31st overall pick (not a snub by anyone’s estimation) and fuels him to a Hall of Fame career. Short of that, there is simply no way the Blues did not make the trade of the decade or perhaps one of the trades of all time in their franchise history.

The Blues won as a unit and it was not a one-man show by O’Reilly, but the Blues were also a unit of pieces playing as a whole. Remove O’Reilly and a lot of that offensive cohesion falls apart.

No matter who they put on his line, their offensive numbers went up. During 2018-19, O’Reilly had an astronomical 8.8 point share. Point shares are a value given to the amount of points contributed by a person’s play. So, whether that’s a goal or assist, faceoff win or defensive play, it adds up.

Buffalo has gotten absolutely nothing out of the trade thus far. Patrik Berglund, who many Blues fans still wish the best to, had somewhat of a breakdown and briefly retired from hockey before attempting to return in Sweden.

The Sabres terminated his contract after he just left the team. So, even if he ever returned to the NHL, it would not be with them.

Vladimir Sobotka did his part to live up to his end of the deal. However, he played in 69 games in 2018-19 and had 13 points. That’s a low not matched since his first full season with Boston when he had 10 points. Buffalo saw him fit to only dress for 16 games in 2019-20.

Tage Thompson has been somewhat of a disaster so far. It has to be said that he’s only 22 and will still likely have an NHL career and a decent one.

However, Thompson’s motivation to prove St. Louis wrong only produced seven goals and 12 points in 65 games in 2018-19. Thompson spent the entire year of 2019-20 in the minors except for one game.

He had one game with the Sabres in his second year with the organization. He did not play seven minutes in that game.

Then we get to the draft pick. Johnson is still growing as a player.

He had a decent 2018-19 with six goals and 25 points in 54 games with the Souix Falls Stampede of the USHL. He followed that up with eight assists for the Minnesota Gophers in his freshman season in the NCAA for 2019-20.

Those aren’t gaudy numbers, but you never know. You also don’t know what the 2021 second round pick the Sabres received to complete the deal will be.

What we do know is the odds are very much against any of those players reaching the heights O’Reilly did in just his first season with the Blues. It was not the case, but had O’Reilly been a free agent, he could have left and the Blues would still have won that deal.

We can take a wait and see approach, but after just two seasons, one man has eclipsed the point totals of four. O’Reilly was having a “poor” season in 2019-20 and was still going to break his own personal record for assists before the virus shut everything down.

Be a hater if you choose, but realize it is your own dislike of the player or the team he is currently on. Outside the whole wait and see attitude, there is no objective way to say the Blues did anything but crush this deal.

Playoff MVP – check. Stanley Cup ring – check. Stats to back up how great he is – check. Beloved in St. Louis after one season and just kept it up after year two – check.

The Blues tried sending a lot of bodies away for just a few in the past and it failed miserably. This time around, they sent a lot of bodies for just one and it could not have gone in their favor any more.