One Team Wanted Ryan O'Reilly, The Other Team Didn't

from John Vogl of the Buffalo News,

Murray talked with O’Reilly’s agent after the trade.
“I walked over and introduced myself around the fifth pick or sixth pick,” Murray said in BB&T Center. “They got him on the phone and I spoke to him. I told them that I hoped we could start talking contract extension whenever we’re able to, and that’s July 1.”
The Denver Post reported Friday night that O’Reilly asked the Avs for an eight-year, $64 million extension.
“You know going in when you make a trade like this that negotiations are going to be starting a high number,” Murray said. “We’re fully prepared for that.”
The 6-foot, 210-pounder joins a center corps that includes Jack Eichel, Zemgus Girgensons and Sam Reinhart. O’Reilly won 53.4 percent of his faceoffs last season and will give a boost to the Sabres, who finished last in the category at 44.9 percent.
“His hockey sense is off the charts,” Murray said. “I think he makes everybody around him better. I love his work ethic on and off the ice. I love his compete level. There’s nothing I don’t like about him.

from Mike Chambers of the Denver Post,

O’Reilly’s camp told the Avs he wanted $64 million over eight years, equaling an $8 million cap hit. O’Reilly is 24, and apparently not trilled with his $6.2 million salary in 2015-16. He wants to become the only $8 million man under 25; Stamkos, 25, is at $5.5M salary, $7.5M cap hit. Stamkos is probably the world’s top sniper (regular season anyway) and the goal-scorers make the big bucks.
Stamkos has 276 goals in 492 regular-season games. O’Reilly has 90 goals in 427 games.
O’Reilly had 17 goals last season. His replacement, Carl Soderberg, had just 13 for Boston in the same amount of games (82), but Soderberg’s five-year cap hit of $4.75 million is far more sensible, and according to Joe Sakic, Soderberg is the play-making center the Avs want to skate with power forward Gabe Landeskog and lightning-fast right wing Nathan MacKinnon. Soderberg, 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, will actually hit somebody, an aspect of the game O’Reilly rarely participated in.
Because of O’Reilly’s unreasonable salary demands, the Avalanche got younger, bigger and better equipped financially — now and in the future — by sending O’Reilly and fellow Irish chum Jamie McGinn to Buffalo for some of the Sabres’ top picks in 2012 and 2013.

One Team Wanted Ryan O'Reilly, The Other Team Didn't

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