from Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News,

The Sabres are about to add Rasmus Dahlin to their roster and will almost certainly have Casey Mittelstadt on a full-time basis this season. Why in the world would they trade O'Reilly now? You have to be strong down the middle. A lot of teams out there would be pretty envious of a center group that reads Eichel-Mittelstadt-O'Reilly. If you trade O'Reilly, who is taking up all his minutes -- and who is winning a faceoff?

TSN has O'Reilly as No. 2 on its tradebait board heading into the offseason, behind only Ottawa defenseman Erik Karlsson. O'Reilly is coming off a 24-goal, 61-point season where he was the NHL's top faceoff man. And he's going to get traded for saying he hated losing and lost his passion for the game because he saw a locker room where too many guys didn't care? That makes no sense.

All O'Reilly is desperate for is a winning situation. Fans and media routinely crush players for speaking in cliches so now we're all going to turn around and demand O'Reilly's walking papers for being honest? The Sabres were a 62-point embarrassment in the season that just ended. How will trading O'Reilly make them better?

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