O’Reilly? Oh really….
“It’s like walking into Best Buy and loudly rejecting the $800 price tag on a fancy TV. Only to breathlessly race back in a week later, demanding to buy the same TV for $1200. The Avs look like clowns and Calgary inadvertently gave them a rainbow wig by simply trying to acquire a good player through the proper channels.”
Yay. We’re all very excited to have Ryan O’Reilly back in the fold over at the Pepsi Center. Yes. So please don’t take my bitterness to the colossally idiot way this whole thing was handled as sour grapes toward O’Reilly. He wanted a payday and he got it. All Americans (and Canadians) are looking to be compensated for their skills. And you may not think O’Reilly deserves the amount of money he snatched from the jowls of Pierre Lacroix, but you certainly can’t argue that he needed to be compensated fairly. And compensated he was. No, my bitterness is toward Avs management and their continuing downward spiral down the NHL’s toilet.
After a mad scramble by the Avs front office, once the Calgary Flames committed a huge party foul by signing O’Reilly to an offer sheet, the Avs matched the deal and he was once again in burgundy and blue. O’Reilly’s bank account did a backflip, Lacroix probably shit a brick and fans of the team did an ultimate SMFH.
The Kroenkes however may not have noticed yet.
It’s a gross understatement to say that it should have never gotten this far. But O’Reilly wanted more money than was being offered and the post-salary cap Avs have been cheaper than a Chinese made bicycle. The Avs felt they could kick back, let the trade offers roll in and if they didn’t see what they liked, well, O’Reilly could sit out this season until someone else made a better offer. This was a great plan- that is until Calgary went and spoiled their party.
The Avs didn’t want to overpay O’Reilly because their other superstar, Matt Duchene, took a home town discount to “prove” himself before signing his next long term deal. The Avs still wanted to keep costs down while not encouraging rising stars like Gabriel Landeskog to seek more money. O’Reilly’s deal blew that out of the water because now players like Duchene and Landy will be coming around next season with their hands out – and rightfully so.
But the real reason why this has left such a bad taste in the fan’s mouths is just how poorly it all went down. The Avs got played and fell flat on their collective faces trying to correct the situation. Their hasty signing of O’Reilly reeked of desperation because after denying him like Michael did Kay at the end of Godfather II, why all of a sudden did they play ball? Because they had to.
I fully expected O’Reilly to be traded at some point and when I heard about what Calgary had cooking, I figured there was no way in hell Lacroix would sign him after all of the tough guy posturing that went on. To sign him at this point would be admitting O’Reilly was right with Calgary forcing them to do what they never intended. No way they’d accept that right? Wrong. As unpopular as it would have been, the Avs should have taken the draft picks and let O’Reilly walK…er, skate. That would have maintained the tone of how they have been doing business all along and while a bit embarrassing to have a division rival steal away one of your best players, it wouldn’t have been half as bad as what actually happened.
It’s like walking into Best Buy and loudly rejecting the $800 price tag on a fancy TV. Only to breathlessly race back in a week later, demanding to buy the same TV for $1200. The Avs look like clowns and Calgary inadvertently gave them a rainbow wig by simply trying to acquire a good player through the proper channels.
So now the Avs will have to overpay everyone. Precisely the thing they had avoided doing over the last several years. All because they weren’t prepared. We all hoped they would start spending some money, but not like this. If this isn’t a wake up call to the Kroenke’s that the people they left in charge of their hockey franchise are inept, rudderless fools, then they probably deserve the embarrassing antics now connected with their name. Someone should let them know what’s going on.
