The St. Louis Blues are currently 2-3-3 on the season. There is not a lot to be happy about as a Blues fan at the moment. One bright spot for the Blues right now is centre Ryan O’Reilly.
Ryan O’Reilly This Season
27-year old O’Reilly is in his 10th NHL season. He currently leads the team in assists with eight and points with 10. He put up six points in the last three games. His faceoff percentage is 61.9 percent and he has 109 faceoff wins. He has the most face-off wins in the Western Conference and the second most in the NHL, behind only Jordan Staal of the Carolina Hurricanes. He has the second highest average ice time on the team with 21:27 behind Alex Pietrangelo. O’Reilly is one of the only Blues players doing his best to give the team a chance to win every game.
The Blues traded a 2019 first round pick, a 2021 second round pick and forwards Patrik Berglund, Vladimir Sobotka and Tage Thompson to the Buffalo Sabres for Ryan O’Reilly in July.
O’Reilly‘s Career
O’Reilly was drafted 33rd overall in the second round of the 2009 NHL draft. He spent six seasons with the Colorado Avalanche. In those six seasons, he played 427 games and had 246 points. His face-off percentage was 51.8 percent. Ryan O’Reilly averaged 18:26 of ice time per game. He also played in 13 playoff games with the Avalanche, in which he had seven points, had a faceoff percentage of 45.9 percent and averaged 19:55 of ice time per game. He got traded to the Buffalo Sabres in 2015. As a member of the Sabres, Ryan O’Reilly had 176 points in 224 games. His faceoff percentage was 58.3 percent. He averaged 21:19 of ice time per game. Everywhere he goes, he gets better. That is certainly the case so far with Ryan O’Reilly in St. Louis.
Ryan O’Reilly has an older brother playing in the NHL, Cal O’Reilly. Cal is in his seventh NHL season. He has played for the Nashville Predators, Buffalo Sabres, Arizona Coyotes, Pittsburgh Penguins and now the Minnesota Wild. Cal played with Ryan in Buffalo from 2015-17. He has 49 points in 145 career games.
With a player as explosive as Ryan O’Reilly sometimes centring Vladimir Tarasenko, the Blues have no excuse to be playing poorly. O’Reilly’s talent would be wasted with a mediocre Blues team. Imagine how far he could help the Blues get into the playoffs. If the rest of the team was playing as well as Ryan O’Reilly, the Blues would have nothing to worry about.
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