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| Ryan O'Reilly is back with the Avs and must make amends. (Credits: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images) |
The NHL lockout was lifted on January 12th, and seven days later, under the bright lights of Saturday night, play resumed. Through the dark tunnels and onto the glistening ice, the players streamed out from L.A. to Boston, thrilled to be back doing the thing they do best.
In Colorado though, one player was absent from this celebratory return. Ryan O’Reilly, the 22-year old do-everything center for the Avalanche, greeted the end of the lockout with the start of his holdout. Feeling undervalued by the Avalanche front office, O’Reilly shut himself inside while his teammates rushed onto the pond.
One of those teammates was fellow 22-year old, Matt Duchene. Duchene, the speedy, uber-skilled forward from Ontario, was breaking the seal of his two-year, $7 million contract he signed last summer, while O’Reilly was buying time with the London Knights of the OHL.
The Avalanche had hoped the two would be breaking this seal together. GM Joe Sacco (a bold name to keep in Colorado, if you’re not busy frequenting All-Star games and hoisting Lord Stanley) offered restricted free agents Duchene and O’Reilly identical contracts in the offseason, and received less than identical responses.
Duchene, being the kind of freewheeling, hockey-loving kid he is, quickly accepted the team’s offer. You could offer Matt Duchene the spare change in your pocket to play hockey and he’d hide a grin, grab the money, and then skate off feeling like the greatest hustler that ever lived. O’Reilly, on the other hand, felt the notoriously tightfisted Avalanche were lowballing him, and waited….and waited….and waited.
It could be argued of the two, it was Duchene who had the right to feel undervalued. Though O’Reilly was coming off a more productive year, as Duchene was limited to just 58 games last season with an ankle injury, Duchene boasted better career numbers in fewer games. Through the three-year span of their matching entry-level contracts, Duchene racked up 65 goals to O’Reilly’s 39, 85 assists to O’Reilly’s 68, and 150 points to O’Reilly’s 107. And yet there was O’Reilly demanding more money, and Duchene signing his name.
But O’Reilly’s value to the team is not directly translated in numbers we like to keep track of, so the argument says. His exploits on the ice involve, as hockey players like to say, “the little things”: stalwart defensive play, high faceoff success, a penchant for takeaways, strength on the puck. It’s these savvy characteristics that have earned O’Reilly the nickname Factor among Avalanche fans. And let’s not forget, 109 points in the first three years of his career isn’t exactly offensively-starved hockey, either.
Yet despite this worthy offensive production from two of their young stars, the Avalanche finished 25th in the league last year in scoring. This year, their impotence on the offensive end has carried over, and the team again checks in at 25th in scoring. And perhaps more disconcerting is their slip in defensive stability. After allowing just over 2.5 goals per game last year – not a heroic number by any measure, though not an eyesore either – the Avalanche have surrendered nearly 3 goals per game this year.
To say it took some gall for their best two-way player to sheepishly watch from London, Ontario as his team struggled at both ends of the rink is to call the Rockies rocky.
In a shortened season, each game is consequential, each point is precious. There is little time to waste. And with teams searching for their proverbial identity, and finding their proverbial legs, and undertaking every other proverbial start-of-the-season task, the conditions of one’s contract are not seen as a high priority. Especially when one can have $7 million if one so desires.
Needles to say, this type of selfishness did not sit well with the Colorado fans. Nor did it sit well with Colorado players. When Duchene was asked about O’Reilly’s holdout in February, then in it’s 4thweek, he said rather icily, “If I cared about that, maybe I would have done what he did.”
Perhaps Duchene was harboring a little envy, anticipating O’Reilly’s first-class raise compared to his more proletarian one. But his scorn for his teammate’s holdout is more deeply born of a sense of abandonment. Players on the same team make a commitment to each other, an unspoken pledge to band together on the front lines, making their singular interest the team’s interest. O’Reilly dishonored that; worse, he paid it no mind.
And, sure, this may be a fan’s perspective, acutely unexposed to the ceaseless beating that comes with an NHL season, but it sure does seem petty to be offended by a contract to play a kid’s game. A multi-million dollar contract, no less.
As Duchene said: “Paychecks are great. You want to get as much money as you can in this game, but for me, I love this game so much, I love this team and this franchise and this city, there’s no way I could have held out.”
Last Thursday, the Calgary Flames finally made the move on O’Reilly that Colorado was avoiding. The Flames leaned in for the smooch with a 2-year $10 million offer sheet, forcing Sacco and the Avalanche to show their hand. And all of a sudden, the Avalanche had deep pockets.
4 hours after O’Reilly signed the Flames’ offer sheet, the Avalanche, fearful of losing their young star and surely perturbed by Calgary’s purloining ways, matched the tender. In so many ways, this played out like a middle-school duel for the affection of some pedestal-perched sixth-grade girl: Colorado’s expectation that O’Reilly wouldn’t go elsewhere. Calgary’s semi-secretive poach, triggered by Colorado’s cold feet. Colorado’s sudden forwardness. Calgary’s reassertion of its interest in the market: “We attempted to structure the offer so as to enhance our chances of getting the player,” the team said. “We attempted to improve our hockey team and will continue to do so going forward."
Why, of course, Colorado didn’t simply make the offer the Flames did three months ago, if they were so inclined to make it last week, is both a mystery of middle-school romance and professional sports management.
How Duchene fits into all of this is a little less clear. Is he the girl-friend of the sought-after prize, angry at her for not making a move of her own, for playing hard-to-get? Is he the promiscuous hook-up queen, puzzled as to why O’Reilly would have such high standards? Duchene could play a number of roles, but one thing is certain: he’s still not pleased with his covetous teammate.
When asked for his thoughts on Factor coming back, Duchene offered a lukewarm response: “Obviously he’s played the last three years here and good to get him back. He’s a good player.”
When asked if he had anything more to add, Duchene, re-aired his tepidity: No, I mean, good to have him back in the room. We’re all friends with him and it’s going to be good to have him back.”
But O’Reilly should expect such indifference to his return. He has brought it upon himself by leaving his teammates’ sides, at a time when they clearly needed him most. They will give him a chance to redeem himself, because that’s what teammates do, but he’ll have to earn his way back into their good graces.
It will start in the defensive end, where the Avalanche need some help keeping the puck out of their own net, and continue all the way through the offensive end, where they need some help scoring. If O’Reilly can administer some aid to these areas of the team, and breath some life into their playoff hopes, he can go a long way toward justifying that lucrative new contract.
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