Raffi Torres was nothing like the freshly suspended Ryan Reaves, even though opponents cross paths with both of those players at relatively similar levels of peril.
Torres was more like a shark in deep waters. You knew he was down there, swimming around and looking for a victim. But you were never quite sure when he would rise up and bite you with one of his predatorial body checks/head shots.
Tom Wilson? He’s probably a better comparable.
Wilson and Reaves somehow made it through the Ice Age intact, two heavyweights who roam their respective conferences without peer. Like ‘em or hate ‘em, the fact they are unique — and still effective — leaves them in high demand in today’s softer, more gentle National Hockey League.
“Everybody wants a Ryan Reaves,” said Vegas Golden Knights head coach Peter DeBoer on Tuesday. He said this when I asked him about Reaves's value in the bubble in September. “Invaluable, (is the word) I would use. Just, absolutely big value in what he brings in the room, and the amount of space… The flies, so to speak, that he keeps off of the other guys on our team.
“It’s invaluable, and you can’t just measure it by the hits total at the end of the night.”
DeBoer will lose said player to a two-game suspension levied after Reaves took a knee on Ryan Graves’s head in Game 1 of the Vegas-Colorado series.
What Reaves did wasn’t so smart. No one would argue that.
It is, however, a role that is more difficult to fulfill than in the old days, when there was always a heavyweight on the other bench. Back then, the big boys ran their own little employment preservation system. It worked like this:
When Colorado defenceman Graves ran an unsuspecting Mattias Janmark with a heavy, heavy hit — in a 4-0 game that was basically decided — it forced Reaves into action. Years ago, the Avs heavyweight would give him a fight, and everyone was doing their job and proving their worth.
Today, the Avs don’t have that guy. That forces Reaves to improvise. In Game 1, he did a poor job on that front.
He had to do something, or he may as well turn in his key card and file his retirement papers.
He did the wrong something.
“It is harder to be Ryan Reaves. At the same time, everybody wants a Ryan Reaves,” said DeBoer on Tuesday. “This is still a big, physical, hard game. We just came through a team in Minnesota, and I watched the effectiveness of (Marcus) Foligno. If he wasn’t their best player he was in that conversation.
“You have to be a special player to play that role. You have to be able to skate and play within a system, and let the coach be able to put you on the ice for 10 or 15 minutes.
“They’re special athletes. And everybody wants one.”
It must sound like a different language to many people, this premise of a heavyweight like Reaves or Wilson still being relevant in the year 2021. And we’re not here to stand up for fighting in hockey, or defend Reaves’s role.
We’re just living in reality, and the reality is that guys like Reaves and Wilson can be bullies — because there are so few opponents left with a player who can make them stop.
Reaves chirps more in one game than Bob Probert did in a season. Because only one in every five teams has a player willing to make Reaves stop. Probert had a suitor every night if he wanted one.
Reaves, Wilson, they can say and do whatever they want, on most nights.
But on others, like in Game 1 of the Golden Knights series against Colorado, the tables get turned on Reaves. Now there isn’t an obvious opponent on the other bench that would allow Reaves to fulfill his employ. And because he is so big, and so tough, other players don’t feel shame when they refuse his entreaties to fight.
It is at times like that where being one of the last living, breathing hockey dinosaurs get complicated.
“I think we do a good job of being a big, heavy, hard, physical team, without crossing that line,” DeBoer said. “Is it harder than it was 10 years ago? I think so. That line of acceptability has moved … socially and on the rink too.”
Reaves crossed the line when he knelt down on the head of the fallen Graves inside the scrum, as if the cameras would somehow miss the fact he was grinding Graves’s face into the ice. For that, he received a two-game suspension.
Good call, Department of Player Safety.
Late in the Minnesota series, Reaves hit Wild defenceman Ryan Suter from behind in such a way that Suter’s head bounced off the goal post and/or cross bar. It was a cheap, dangerous play by Reaves on an unsuspecting Suter.
Guys as tough as Reaves shouldn’t resort to those kinds of plays. No one should, for that matter.
But just as a head coach will accept the odd defensive lapse by an 80-point player, when you’ve got a guy who is willing to play the role of protector to your entire roster, a two-game suspension is simply the cost of doing business.
Vegas will pay that cost, and Reaves will be back for Game 4.
Count on it.
