Ryan O’Reilly has completely taken over the first round series between the Vancouver Canucks and St. Louis Blues. The 29-year-old centre is doing everything for the Blues: killing penalties, shutting down the Canucks’ best players, putting up points on the power play, and scoring highlight reel goals.
It’s stunning to watch O’Reilly dominate and think that he’s been traded twice in his career for middling returns. Most general managers dream of having a player like O’Reilly on their roster, but twice teams have decided they’d rather have a handful of mediocrity than one of the best centres in the NHL.
Their loss was the Blues’ gain. O’Reilly led the Blues to their first Stanley Cup in franchise history in his first year with the team, winning the Selke and Conn Smythe trophies along the way.
The Canucks likely wish the Buffalo Sabres had hung onto O’Reilly instead of trading him to the Blues. Their celebration after winning the first two games of the series was short-lived, as the Blues have come storming back to tie the series 2-2. O’Reilly has been the difference maker, assisting on both the tying and game-winning goals in Game 3, then scoring two goals and assisting on a third in Game 4.
That gives O’Reilly 3 goals and 6 points in the 4 games of the series, the points barely touch on just how dominant O’Reilly has really been.
When O’Reilly has been on the ice at 5-on-5, the Blues have out-shot the Canucks 55-to-11, an even 5-to-1 ratio. That’s about as tilted as the ice can get: the Blues get five shots on goal to every one shot the Canucks get whenever O’Reilly steps over the boards at 5-on-5.
It should come as no surprise that O’Reilly has been used by the Blues primarily to shut down the Canucks’ top line of Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser. Despite a breakout performance from Bo Horvat in this series, the Pettersson line is still the Canucks’ biggest threat offensively.
O’Reilly’s big performance in Game 4, however, came partly because he wasn’t matched up against the Pettersson line. Loosed from his shutdown duties for the first time all series, O’Reilly was free to dominate offensively, running roughshod over the Canucks’ other lines.
Meanwhile, the Pettersson line, without having to face the O’Reilly line, came through with a goal at 5-on-5 off of some sustained pressure in the offensive zone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough and none of the Canucks’ other lines could come up with much.
While it seemed like getting Pettersson away from the matchup with O’Reilly was going to be a key to this series, the opposite might be true. Perhaps the Canucks should strive to get that matchup, forcing O’Reilly to shut down Pettersson so that his efforts are spent primarily on that role. By letting O’Reilly shut down Pettersson, they might simultaneously shut down O’Reilly.
“That’s a matchup that they wanted,” said Green after Game 2. “That’s a good line. That’s a line that plays every top line in the league, the O’Reilly line. A line that’s won a Stanley Cup. You’re not going to get a much harder matchup than that.”
The other aspect of getting Pettersson back matched up with O’Reilly is that Pettersson has the capability to adapt his game in ways that the rest of the Canucks’ lineup cannot. Where other players might find their usual bag of tricks ineffective against O’Reilly, Pettersson has a much deeper bag to pull from.
One shift from Game 3 demonstrates just how hard O’Reilly is to play against, but also how effective Pettersson can be at overcoming that challenge.
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Pettersson picks up the puck in the defensive zone and is immediately set upon by O’Reilly. Pettersson uses his legs to protect the puck from O'Reilly's attempted stick check, then lowers his shoulder and uses his arm to stave off another attempted O’Reilly check to gain the zone.
At that point, Pettersson is swarmed by three Blues’ defenders, but that allows Tanner Pearson to pull the puck out of the swarm and get a fantastic scoring chances from between the hashmarks.
The clip shows how relentless O’Reilly is in his puck pursuit, but also how Pettersson can adapt and protect the puck from his haranguing. Perhaps Pettersson can continue to adapt as the series progresses, but also, if O’Reilly is spending more of his time each shift chasing down Pettersson, that’s less time he’s spending on the cycle in the offensive zone, creating scoring chances for the Blues.
At that point, maybe the Horvat line can win a matchup against the Brayden Schenn line or the third line can get an easier matchup than trying to hang on for dear life against O’Reilly in the defensive zone.
At the very least, it’s something to consider as the Canucks enter Game 5 on Wednesday night.
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