Aside from landing a nine-year veteran in O’Reilly on Sunday, St. Louis committed $31 million in salary to sign forwards David Perron and center Tyler Bozak to multiyear contracts.
”Once you miss the playoffs, change has to happen,” Armstrong said. ”We’re a non-playoff team for the first time in a number of years and it doesn’t sit well with the St. Louis Blues organization, and certainly the fan base.”
Making drastic changes was also the theme in Buffalo, where general manager Jason Botterill continued shuffling the under-performing roster of a team that finished last in the standings for the third time in five years.
”We had to change the dynamic,” Botterill said. ”The bottom line was there’s a lot of great people in that locker room, but when you finish 31st, you have to look to make changes.”
The Sabres added experience to a young roster by acquiring veterans forwards Vladimir Sobotka and Patrik Berglund. They also acquired forward Tage Thompson, a 2016 first-round draft pick, who had three goals and six assists in 41 games as an NHL rookie this season last year. Buffalo rounded out its haul by adding a conditional first-round draft pick next year and a second-rounder in 2021.
The Blues also agreed to pay O’Reilly the $7.5 million contract bonus he was due by the end of the day. Botterill said the price for O’Reilly would have gone up once the Sabres were put in a position to pay the bonus.
Berglund, a former first-round draft pick Aaron Burbridge Jersey , has 168 goals and 322 points in 694 games over a 10-year career in St. Louis. Sobotka is a defensive forward, who has 47 goals and 155 points in 463 career games over nine seasons.
The trade continues a busy stretch in Botterill’s rebuilding plans.
Aside from selecting 18-year-old Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin with the No. 1 pick in the draft last month, he also acquired play-making forward Conor Sheary in a trade with Pittsburgh last week. The Sabres addressed their goaltending needs by signing former Blues backup Carter Hutton to a three-year, $8.25 million deal Sunday.
Hutton will share the starting duties with Linus Ullmark, who is pegged to make the jump to Buffalo after three seasons in the minors.
O’Reilly was expendable because he was one of the few assets the Sabres could trade. And he also caused a stir during an end-of-season availability by suggesting there were times he had lost the passion for hockey and that a losing culture had crept into the locker room.
Armstrong is confident a change of scenery will help O’Reilly.
”I’ve certainly been guilty of saying things I was thinking and wishing I didn’t say them. He probably would add that to the list of things he wishes he could’ve kept internal,” said Armstrong, who is familiar with O’Reilly during the time they’ve spent together as part of Canada’s national team at international tournaments.
”He’s got great passion for the sport. He’s got great passion to compete and win,” he added. ”And hopefully, this gives him the boost that he feels is necessary that he can come in here. And quite honestly, we need that boost.”
O’Reilly completed his third season in Buffalo since being acquired in a trade with Colorado, after which the Sabres signed him to a seven-year, $52.5 million contract. He’s one of the league’s most dependable two-way forwards Ja'Wuan James Jersey , and set the NHL record by winning 1,273 faceoffs last year.
Perron returns to St. Louis for the third time in his NHL career after signing for $16 million over four years. He spent last season in Las Vegas, where he set career highs with 50 assists and 66 points. Bozak, who signed a three-year, $15 million deal with St. Louis, spent his first nine seasons in Toronto, where he scored 136 goals and 365 points in 594 games.
”You bring in Ryan O’Reilly, and you bring in Perron and Bozak, experience players, I think it just makes you better,” Armstrong said.
Notes: Buffalo signed goalie Scott Wedgewood, who is expected to take over the starting duties in the minors. … Forward Scott Wilson returned to Buffalo by signing a two-year Kwon Alexander Jersey , $2.1 million contract. … The Sabres also signed defenseman Brandon Hickey to a two-year entry-level contract. Hickey completed his senior season at Boston University, and was acquired by Buffalo in trade with Arizona last month.
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A New Jersey memorabilia dealer who claims New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning conspired with the team’s equipment staff to sell bogus ”game-used” helmets to unsuspecting collectors as part of a long-running scam could get a chance to make his case in court next month.
A jury in New Jersey is scheduled to be selected May 14.
Attorneys for the two-time Super Bowl champion have attacked the allegations in Eric Inselberg’s lawsuit as ”inflammatory and baseless,” and have accused Inselberg’s attorneys of using underhanded tactics to whip up a media frenzy against their client.
The lawsuit has encompassed four years, two courts and thousands of pages of documents, and has featured more than a little acrimony between the two sides as one of the NFL’s oldest and most-revered franchises has had to defend allegations that conjure up the seamy side of the sports memorabilia business.
Attorneys representing Inselberg, Manning, the team and an equipment manager named in the suit didn’t respond to requests for comment last week.
Inselberg filed the suit in 2014 and accused Manning and the team of doctoring jerseys, helmets and other equipment to make it look as though they had been used during play. He was among a group of memorabilia dealers accused of selling counterfeit jerseys following an FBI sting.
Though the case against Inselberg eventually was dropped, he said in court papers that he wanted the Giants to be held accountable for the lies that led to his indictment and ruined his business.
The dispute boiled over in April 2017 when Inselberg’s attorneys filed court documents that contained emails between Manning and equipment manager Joseph Skiba, including one in which Manning asks Skiba to get ”2 helmets that can pass as game used.”
In the furor after the emails became public, Manning, who is known for his even-tempered demeanor Ryan Schraeder Jersey , angrily denounced the allegations, saying, ”I have done nothing wrong and I have nothing to hide, and I know when this is done everyone will see it the same way.”
Manning didn’t return a message left with a spokesperson last week.
In a request to the judge to impose sanctions on Inselberg’s attorneys, Manning’s attorneys wrote that the emails were provided during the normal exchange of information that occurs in all civil cases and were labeled confidential.
They also argued the emails showed Manning carrying out the terms of his personal services contract with Steiner Sports, under which he provided them with two game-used helmets and two game-used jerseys after each season.
The email in question ”was intended by Mr. Manning to be a request for his game-used helmets that were in the possession of the Giants’ equipment staff, consistent with Mr. Manning’s intentions and practices for other years as corroborated by the other email exchanges,” they wrote.
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