A wild set of circumstances almost prevented Ryan O'Reilly and Noel Acciari from making their Leafs debuts last night
Less than 24 hours after being acquired by the Leafs from the St. Louis Blues, Ryan O'Reilly and Noel Acciari made their Leafs debuts, with each leaving their fingerprints all over the team's dominant win against the Montreal Canadiens.
O'Reilly notched an assist on Michael Bunting's late 2nd period goal and went an impressive 12/14 in the faceoff dot, while Acciari was credited for 5 hits and 5 shots on goal in the contest. The Leafs were looking for an impact forward for their top 6 and someone who could drive play and give them a spark in the bottom six. It's early, but it looks as though the Buds did just that in the O'Reilly/Acciari deal.
Perhaps the wildest thing about O'Reilly and Acciari playing for their new club less than 24 hours after the deal was made was not the fact that it was their pushing Sheldon Keefe to allow it to happen, but rather the fact that neither player had their gear with them at the time of the trade, which almost prevented them from making their debuts last night against Montreal.
According to O'Reilly, both he and Acciari's gear was locked up at the Blues' facility at the time of the trade. Normally when a trade is processed, it takes a couple of days for the player(s) acquired to join their new team. However, when O'Reilly and Acciari found out they were headed to Toronto, they did everything they could to expedite the process to join their new team right away. In this case, O'Reilly found a way to acquire the keys to the locked facility and drove there to pick up both he and Acciari's gear to ensure that they'd have everything they needed to hop on a plane and arrive in Toronto, with full gear in tow, in time to play against the Habs.
What a couple of absolute beauties. More than anything else, teams want guys who want to play and want to win. I think it's safe to say that O'Reilly and Acciari are two guys who check those boxes - and plenty of other boxes as well.
| POLL | ||
19 FEVRIER | 242 ANSWERS A wild set of circumstances almost prevented Ryan O'Reilly and Noel Acciari from making their Leafs debuts last night Is Ryan O'Reilly the missing piece that the Leafs needed to get past the first round for the first time in 2 decades? | ||
| Yes | 188 | 77.7 % |
| No | 54 | 22.3 % |
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