There are two sides to every trade and as excited as the Toronto Maple Leafs and their fans are to welcome Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari, there’s no doubt the team those guys used to play for are devastated by the loss.
“That’s one of the tougher trades I’ve dealt with,” said Brayden Schenn, O’Reilly’s former St. Louis Blues teammate, after the Blues’ 4-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday afternoon. “I’ve known [O’Reilly] since I was 17 and played some [international events with him] and obviously many good years here.”
Schenn, of course, was on the 2019 Stanley Cup-winning Blues team with O’Reilly when the latter was named MVP of the playoffs. He knows firsthand what the Leafs’ new centre can bring to a team both on the ice and in the dressing room.
“He comes to the rink and [it’s] lots of laughs and joking with him and on the flip side of that, he demands a lot of his teammates and works extremely hard and pulls guys into the fight each and every night. Guys like that are obviously great to play with and [it was] shocking seeing the news of both those guys going, really, those are two character guys — I guess shocking when you [actually] saw it, but it’s been talked about for so long I guess it’s not really a shock.”
This move, of course, is the second major trade St. Louis has made in the past week or so as a club that won the Cup just four years ago begins to turn a page. Before shipping O’Reilly and Acciari to Toronto, Blues GM Doug Armstrong sent winger Vladimir Tarasenko — like O’Reilly and Acciari, a pending UFA this summer — to the New York Rangers. It was clear during Armstrong’s press conference on Saturday afternoon the esteem he had for his former captain and the Russian winger who’d spent his entire career in St. Louis.
“I said this to [Tarasenko] when he left, too: I fully understand that whatever success I’ve had as a manger is on the back of the players and no one [was more important] than those two players,” he said. “I want to wish Ryan and his family nothing but the best in Toronto.”
Armstrong knows as well as anyone how difficult winning in the post-season is, especially when your first-round draw figures to be the Tampa Bay Lighting squad that’s advanced to three straight Stanley Cup Finals. Now, thanks to this deal, the Leafs may be better equipped than ever to win that type of battle.
“They’re going to have a difficult first-round matchup and it’s going to be must-see TV,” Armstrong said. “But I think [O’Reilly and Acciari] are going to really help the Leafs as they try and push forward.”