The Ryan O'Reilly super thread 2015!!!

[TrueBlueGED]

That's way too much to give up. IMO

Man, I would LOVE to get rid of Gorges and his contract. I think that thing has negative trade value right now.

[Hoss]

Man, I would LOVE to get rid of Gorges and his contract. I think that thing has negative trade value right now.

$3.9M per for the next three years is nothing... Especially because it's probably safe to assume we won't be a cap team. Gorges is fine...

[TrueBlueGED]

$3.9M per for the next three years is nothing... Especially because it's probably safe to assume we won't be a cap team. Gorges is fine...

That's a lot of money for Mike Weber, Sr.

[darksabre]

Judging by their screen doors I guess TrueBlue and D4rk have something to offer in that department...

 

 

 

But otherwise I think the first two names they ask for are Bogosian and Ristolainen. I can't see that happening and would be highly disappointed if it did. I don't think it will.

Outside of them we've got Zadorov, Gorges, Pysyk, McCabe and Weber to offer in a deal. Zadorov is the popular name, and I would expect that he would be a key piece to the deal if Colorado believes that he can play in the NHL right now (which could be why Murray/Bylsma put out to the media that they believe he can). The most popular offer is some variation of Zadorov, Grigorenko, 21 and maybe another piece. I could see Colorado pushing for something like Zadorov and one of the other dmen I just mentioned excluding Bogo/Risto, 21 and a prospect (Grigorenko, Larsson, Compher, Hurley).

 

If the deal is Zadorov, Weber/Gorges, Grigorenko and 21 then I think it's a definite yes. If Weber/Gorges has to be one of Pysyk/McCabe then I don't give them the extra prospect and might want a lesser defensive prospect coming back our way.

:lol:

 

I'd like to go on record as being completely disinterested in O'Reilly and all the related speculation.

[Bob Malooga]

TBPhD -- that is MVP-level posting right there.

 

But I still want Tarasenko. (But would love to see a breakdown on him if you're so inclined.)

Is this SERIOUSLY a legitimate idea? Is St. Louis that crunched against the cap, they could lose this kid?

 

That is just mind-boggling to me...even Toffoli and Saad are hard to see going elsewhere. (Dougie Hamilton too.)

[nfreeman]

Is this SERIOUSLY a legitimate idea? Is St. Louis that crunched against the cap, they could lose this kid?

 

That is just mind-boggling to me...even Toffoli and Saad are hard to see going elsewhere. (Dougie Hamilton too.)

 

I think for STL, a historically tight-budgeted team, biting off a $54MM commitment to Tarasenko will not be an easy decision (although I do think they would ultimately match).  However, you could certainly be right that they will focus more on the annual cap hit than the term and be OK with the grand total.

[IKnowPhysics]

That's a lot of money for Mike Weber, Sr.

 

I think it's still handy to maintain a good veteran presence on the blue line for a couple of years until we're irrefutably convinced that all of our young guys are ready to play big, hard minutes.  Not doing so has been the plight of both Edmonton and Colorado.

[TrueBlueGED]

I think it's still handy to maintain a good veteran presence on the blue line for a couple of years until we're irrefutably convinced that all of our young guys are ready to play big, hard minutes. Not doing so has been the plight of both Edmonton and Colorado.

The plight if those teams has been bad defense, not young defense. Josh Gorges is not good, and if he's getting the tough minutes, we're in bad shape. He's Mike Weber at 2.5 times the price.

[inkman]

The plight if those teams has been bad defense, not young defense. Josh Gorges is not good, and if he's getting the tough minutes, we're in bad shape. He's Mike Weber at 2.5 times the price.

And 1/4 Weber's jam.

[X. Benedict]

The plight if those teams has been bad defense, not young defense. Josh Gorges is not good, and if he's getting the tough minutes, we're in bad shape. He's Mike Weber at 2.5 times the price.

 

Josh Gorges is much better than what we saw last season. Basically this: The way he had to play for Ted Nolan probably just shortened his career by three years. He was tethered on a team that had no transition system and no plan to clear the zone. He blocked 148 shots, and had 75 hits in only 45 games. He was asked to pay a physical price for a lost season and was pretty much beat up after the first 15 games. 

 

I was embarrassed to watch how he came to play and  was used night after night. 

 

He's solid. But it was almost abusive how he got used up in Nolan's mindless scheme. 

[K8prisoner]

As others have said, really good post, and I appreciate you doing it. But I'm totally going to challenge some of the stuff in here :)

 

Old school hockey fans will probably never accept this, but +/- is simply a bad stat and shouldn't be used. I honestly think it's basically useless for everything, and simply doesn't measure defensive capability. Look no further than Patrice Bergeron only being a +2 this year. Does anybody out there think he forgot how to play defense? Alex Ovechkin regularly posts high positive +/- numbers, but even if he improved a little defensively this season, nobody is confusing him for a Selke winner. One way to at least start to look at a player's defensive value is to see how opponents do against him versus against others. Super small sample size warning here, and I'm simply eye-balling this, but O'Reilly's opponents' CF% regularly is lower against him than against everyone else they play. To illustrate, I'll just take Freeman's current mancrush, Tarasenko, who was 49.1% against O'Reilly but 55% against everyone else. I think his defensive reputation is legit (Saad's numbers are also very impressive, and their head-to-head numbers are literally a wash). Play around yourself here: http://stats.hockeyanalysis.com/showplayer.php?pid=1180&withagainst=true&season=2014-15&sit=5v5

 

I think the fatal flaw in your analysis is that you're not doing enough to take team context into account when looking at individual player performance. There's a few ways to go about doing this. For one, I think we can look at team-level performance--the primary reason Saad's Corsi is so much better than O'Reilly's is because the Hawks are much better than the Avs, and I'm fairly certain Patrick Roy is as tactically sound as Ted Nolan. This year, Chicago was the league's 3rd best possession team with a score-adjusted Corsi of 53.5%. Colorado, meanwhile, was a Buffalo-esque 29th in the league at 42.7%. What this means is basically every player on Chicago is going to have a better CF% than any player on Colorado, including undisputed studs like Landeskog and Duchene. 

 

One way we can try to work around this is to look at relative Corsi numbers. Now we have to be careful because relative numbers are not directly comparable across teams, but it does help us see if a player is being dragged down (or propped up) by circumstances. Saad's score-adjusted relative CF% (hereafter RelCF%) is .24, right in the middle of Chicago's forward group. So basically he's not driving play himself, but he's not a total passenger to a superior team either--he's earned his spot on the top line. O'Reilly, on the other hand, has a RelCF% of 4.1, 3rd among the team's forwards behind only MacKinnon and Landeskog. Put differently, O'Reilly is a really good possession player on an awful team, which is dragging down his numbers. 

 

Another way we can try to look at team effects is to look more closely at the performance of the players that somebody plays with, and how those linemates perform when separated. This can come with a sample size warning as teams tend to keep their best players together more often than not, but it's still useful. Saad spent 55.7% of EV time with Hossa and 54.6% with Toews. That line's CF% while together is 57.7%...but how about apart? Saad without those two is at 50%, while Hossa is at 53.8% and Toews at 54.6%. So each player on that line is better off together than apart, but the dropoff for Saad is over than 2x than for the others. It's also worth noting that the line together gets 55% offensive zone starts, while when apart Saad's jumps to 59.6%, so he's getting a slightly better offensive opportunity when apart from the others, but his numbers drop off (the same pattern emerges for Toews). He's a real contributor on the line, but he's pretty clearly 3rd banana.

 

So how does that look for O'Reilly? Pretty similar. O'Reilly is almost always with Landeskog--67.9% of the time, but his 3rd linemate is not nearly as consistent: Tanguay 35.7% of the time and MacKinnon 30.8% of the time. There's no way I'm ambitious enough to check the timeline, but my guess is this is due to MacKinnon's injury. So I'm going to run the analysis one time with a line of Landeskog-O'Reilly-Tanguay and once for Landeskog-MacKinnon-O'Reilly. My assumption going in is that O'Reilly is going to look much better relative to Tanguay than compared with MacKinnon :lol:

 

Landeskog-MacKinnon-O'Reilly

CF% together: 50.4% (congrats to them on being good enough to overcome Roy)

OZ% together: 45.3%

O'Reilly apart: 44.6% Corsi and 42.8% OZ

Landeskog apart: 47.3% Corsi and 41.6% OZ

MacKinnon apart: 48.1% Corsi and 47.6% OZ

 

Landeskog-O'Reilly-Tanguay

CF% together: 48.5%

OZ% together: 42.1%

O'Reilly apart: 45.9% Corsi and 43.9% OZ

Landeskog apart: 48.2% Corsi and 43% OZ

Tanguay apart: 41.2% Corsi and 46.8% OZ

 

What does this tell us? Well the easy way of putting it is that MacKinnon > Landeskog > O'Reilly >>>>> Tanguay. But we probably knew that already :P

More seriously, the pattern we see with O'Reilly is pretty close to that of Saad--a player who is contributing to making the top line better, but is pretty clearly the 3rd best player on that line. The only caveat I'd add here is that Saad's dropoff without Toews and Hossa is larger than O'Reilly's without Landeskog and MacKinnon, and that while apart Saad gets more favorable offensive starts and O'Reilly gets worse. We're not talking massive differences here, but they do exist. 

 

More on team context, hooray! We can also look at the quality of competition each player faces and zone starts relative to the team. One metric that has emerged for looking at quality of competition is simple: time on ice percentage. The theory is that the better players get more ice time. You'll of course have some exceptions, but this has been found to be very consistent and have good validity. It's better than using Corsi-based quality of competition because it essentially circumvents team effects, so cross-team comparisons are cleaner. Saad faces the third toughest competition on Chicago, with opponents averaging 17.68% per game and O'Reilly faces the toughest on Colorado at 17.95%. This is a really small difference, and I don't put much if any stock into it individually, but it does continue the trend of O'Reilly being given marginally more difficult ice time. 

 

One last thing I'll look at are scoring rates at even strength. This is the one area where Saad is pretty clearly ahead of O'Reilly. Saad's points per 60 minutes of ice time (P/60) is 2.08 and O'Reilly's is 1.91. Personally, I attribute almost all of this to player usage, with O'Reilly starting in the offensive zone only 44.5% of the time and Saad starting there 57.7% of the time. We could probably argue over how much this ultimately means for the scoring rates, but I think we can agree that the difference in zone starts between the two means something. 

 

Overall I think the players are pretty close, but I think the whole story leans in favor of O'Reilly. He gets a little tougher minutes and suffers a little less of a dropoff when he's separated from his stud linemates. He also has to deal with Patrick Roy's coaching, as opposed to getting the benefit of Quenneville's. And, of course, the real big thing: he's a natural center who plays wing, whereas Saad is strictly a winger. I put a lot of weight on position versatility (look at the luxury Tampa has of temporarily putting Stamkos on the wing to strengthen the top-6), and given the stats, I'd rather have O'Reilly. That is not meant to disparage Saad at all--he's great, and there's a compelling argument for him as well (younger so more growth potential, faster skater), and I'd love to have him on the Sabres. But if I can only have one, I'm going O'Reilly because he's currently better and brings position versatility...but you're certainly not crazy for wanting Saad.

 

 

wow.. i know why i dont read news articles and just read these...

 

   my question is this... is this draft deep like 2003?, don't you guys want to let this year play out before giving up the farm for a second arrogant over paid moderately talented forward that wont score 30 and 70 (Pomminstein w/o the defense) before you really know what this team is and what it truly needs .... you would be setting the personality of the team for half a decade with oreilly and kane being the unselfish team first leaders?   without seeing what zemgus, zadorov, grigs with real linemates and a guy like sprong  and another scoring gamble at 31 who all  may score 50 points (less zadorov) at least once in their careers... i think the kane trade is good bet and gives cover for eichel but  21 and 31 might really be interesting  to see if they can compete quickly with eichel and grow with him...  

 

please!  help a poor lurker understand why we need either (saad  or oreilly) at such a huge cost.. why are we going to ruin all we suffered for by not waiting to find a similar guy next year in fa or  at the trade deadline, at least knowing what  players  we truly have.before giving them away..

Edited June 15, 2015 by K8prisoner

[SabresBillsFan]

wow.. i know why i dont read news articles and just read these...

 

   my question is this... is this draft deep like 2003?, don't you guys want to let this year play out before giving up the farm for a second arrogant over paid moderately talented forward that wont score 30 and 70 (Pomminstein w/o the defense) before you really know what this team is and what it truly needs .... you would be setting the personality of the team for half a decade with oreilly and kane being the unselfish team first leaders?   without seeing what zemgus, zadorov, grigs with real linemates and a guy like sprong  and another scoring gamble at 31 who all  may score 50 points (less zadorov) at least once in their careers... i think the kane trade is good bet and gives cover for eichel but  21 and 31 might really be interesting  to see if they can compete quickly with eichel and grow with him...  

 

please!  help a poor lurker understand why we need either (saad  or oreilly) at such a huge cost.. why are we going to ruin all we suffered for by not waiting to find a similar guy next year in fa or  at the trade deadline, at least knowing what  players  we truly have.before giving them away..

I agree why give away the farm in order to speed up the rebuild. I personally don't think we need O'Reilly and he wants to much cash for what he does.

[inkman]

I agree why give away the farm in order to speed up the rebuild. I personally don't think we need O'Reilly and he wants to much cash for what he does.

GMTM has been quoted stating he wants to do exactly that "speed up the rebuild."

[Hoss]

GMTM has been quoted stating he wants to do exactly that "speed up the rebuild."

Yeap. And by getting guys similar to O'Reilly. He makes a ton of sense if we talk extension with him.

[thesportsbuff]

Yeap. And by getting guys similar to O'Reilly. He makes a ton of sense if we talk extension with him.

 

Yeah, to me this feels just a few steps down from the Evander Kane thing in the sense that the writing is on the wall. When the whole Kane situation occurred, it was just so obvious to myself and probably everyone that Buffalo would be VERY interested. Especially when the news came out that he had gotten surgery and would miss the rest of the season... that was the kicker... it just made too much sense. I was texting my friends telling them "We are about to get Evander Kane" because it felt like an absolute certainty. (Total eklund move, I know).

 

I won't go as far to say that O'Reilly to BUF feels like an "absolute certainty," because there is obviously a lot more flexibility for Colorado to make something happen, being the off-season. I'm worried about Toronto, mostly, but I'm sure there are any number of teams who could make a deal work. Maybe even Calgary. But given where the Sabres are at, Murray's comments about the type of players he wants, the assets we have, the Grigorenko/Roy connection, the need for D in Colorado (zad/pysyk/mccabe).. it just kind of makes too much sense, again. 

 

I'm all for a trade for O'Reilly, but if it doesn't happen it won't ruin my summer. 

[GoPre]

Yeah, to me this feels just a few steps down from the Evander Kane thing in the sense that the writing is on the wall. When the whole Kane situation occurred, it was just so obvious to myself and probably everyone that Buffalo would be VERY interested. Especially when the news came out that he had gotten surgery and would miss the rest of the season... that was the kicker... it just made too much sense. I was texting my friends telling them "We are about to get Evander Kane" because it felt like an absolute certainty. (Total eklund move, I know).

 

I won't go as far to say that O'Reilly to BUF feels like an "absolute certainty," because there is obviously a lot more flexibility for Colorado to make something happen, being the off-season. I'm worried about Toronto, mostly, but I'm sure there are any number of teams who could make a deal work. Maybe even Calgary. But given where the Sabres are at, Murray's comments about the type of players he wants, the assets we have, the Grigorenko/Roy connection, the need for D in Colorado (zad/pysyk/mccabe).. it just kind of makes too much sense, again. 

 

I'm all for a trade for O'Reilly, but if it doesn't happen it won't ruin my summer. 

 

Here's where things get complicated and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it. W/ legitimate concerns Grigorenko may jump ship for the KHL, Colorado may pass on an offer involving him. Would you be pleased if Murray traded for a player that has interest in leaving the NHL? I wouldn't it. 

 

Has Grigorenko spoken w/ Malkin about all of this? He played for Disco Dan. May have an impact on his decision 

[X. Benedict]

Here's where things get complicated and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it. W/ legitimate concerns Grigorenko may jump ship for the KHL, Colorado may pass on an offer involving him. Would you be pleased if Murray traded for a player that has interest in leaving the NHL? I wouldn't it. 

 

Has Grigorenko spoken w/ Malkin about all of this? He played for Disco Dan. May have an impact on his decision 

 

There is time here. I think it will all become clear on draft day. 

[thesportsbuff]

Here's where things get complicated and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it. W/ legitimate concerns Grigorenko may jump ship for the KHL, Colorado may pass on an offer involving him. Would you be pleased if Murray traded for a player that has interest in leaving the NHL? I wouldn't it. 

 

Has Grigorenko spoken w/ Malkin about all of this? He played for Disco Dan. May have an impact on his decision 

It's a fair concern, but as Benedict said, this could all be rectified by draft day. The Roy connection could also play into that decision. Assuming they have a decent relationship, maybe Grigo would be more comfortable playing for Roy and decide to stay. 

[dudacek]

Everything Grigorenko has said and done up to this point points to him desperately wanting to be in the NHL.

This - if it is real - has to be more about contract than a desire to be in Russia.

[Hoss]

Bob McKenzie says if he were a betting man he would bet on O'Reilly being traded.

[TrueBlueGED]

Bob McKenzie says if he were a betting man he would bet on O'Reilly being traded.

I may have defeated the screen door, but the actual door won this round. If McKenzie follows up with a "Buffalo is the front runner" tweet in the next few days I may be unable to ever have children.

[WildCard]

Bob McKenzie says if he were a betting man he would bet on O'Reilly being traded.

I may have defeated the screen door, but the actual door won this round. If McKenzie follows up with a "Buffalo is the front runner" tweet in the next few days I may be unable to ever have children.

I think Murray's doors are in similar shape, probably needs new garage doors if he can swing Kane, Eichel, and O'Reilly all in one season. I predict we'll go out and get him

[LGR4GM]

I may have defeated the screen door, but the actual door won this round. If McKenzie follows up with a "Buffalo is the front runner" tweet in the next few days I may be unable to ever have children.

If it lasts longer than 4 hours call a doctor.

[Hoss]

If it lasts longer than 4 hours call a doctor.

Yea, she'll need it.

[dudacek]

If it is open season on O'Reilly, I doubt we are the front runner unless O'Reilly really wants to be here and helps the process.

We've got the cap space and the futures.

But someone is going to offer a defenceman that fits Colorado's age group and we arent giving up Bogosian.