Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I get the instinct to pillory specific managers or teams for not acquiring a given player in a trade or via UFA, but in actuality I don't think this is fair. In this instance we could put together a hypothetical package that either looks as good as St Louis's was for O'Reilly, but even if we assume that certain pieces and players were of the same value in the mind of Treliving, it is also still impossible to simultaneously read the mind of Buffalo's GM. For all we know, Botterill was fixated on acquiring Tage Thompson over whatever equivalent prospect Treliving might have offered; to that end, it could also be the case that Treliving was determined to retain his 2019 first-round draft pick, and it is not difficult to fault him for this given what had just transpired in the 2018 draft when NYI walked away with Noah Dobson, and the Flames were left without a pick until #105.
There are certainly enacted decisions for which the Flames should be faulted, including James Neal's UFA deal. However, the non-acquisition of Ryan O'Reilly is not one of them.
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You're right, it's hard to call it a mistake when you have no idea the reasons behind not making the move for ROR. Did he even try? How hard did he try? Did he even have a chance? Who knows?