What the Maple Leafs are getting in Ryan O'Reilly

'The Factor' will be a factor for a team desperately seeking playoff success. Will it be enough to nudge Toronto out of the first round?

Ryan O’Reilly moves the needle for the Toronto Maple Leafs. How far he moves it will be determined once the playoffs start.

Toronto Maple Leafs goaltending prospect Joseph Woll might be the only 24-year-old in the world who doesn’t have any connection to social media. We tell you this not only because he got his first NHL victory of this season Saturday, but that the kid is good. He might actually become the organization’s first legitimate NHL homegrown goalie since James Reimer and the second since Felix Potvin. Yeah, it’s been that bad.

As such, Woll had no idea the Leafs had made a trade to acquire Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari from the St. Louis Blues until he showed up for the morning skate on Saturday. “It was pretty funny,” Woll said. “I was looking at the lineup chart and I was like, ‘What happened to our lines?’ I literally had no idea.”

Well, what happened is that because of the trade, the Maple Leafs’ lines just got a whole lot better. All four of ’em. With the addition of O’Reilly, any possibility of Calle Jarnkrok or Alex Kerfoot playing top-six minutes can now be dispensed with as they permanently take their places in the bottom six that has been bolstered by Acciari.

When Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas traded for O’Reilly and Acciari without subtracting anything from his roster or his group of prospects, he made a very good trade. It was not a blockbuster. He did not swing for the fences. And it likely won’t alter the balance of power in the Atlantic Division or the Eastern Conference. But with O’Reilly in their lineup, the Leafs are undoubtedly a better team than they were before the trade. They’re grittier, they’re hungrier on pucks, they’re more battle-tested. They’re also smarter, more responsible defensively, better on faceoffs, more unwilling to accept losing and have better attention to detail.

That still might not even be enough to get them out of the first round of the playoffs since 2004, forget about winning a Stanley Cup. But they improved their chances of doing both and that’s all you can really hope for in today’s NHL. The Maple Leafs are almost certainly not done and will likely go out and get a guy who can clear the front of their net and have a bit of a snarl on his face while doing it. And with that, they’ll enter the playoffs as a team with a legitimate chance to seriously compete for a Stanley Cup.

And that first-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning just got a whole lot more intriguing with the addition of O’Reilly. To suggest O’Reilly is the same player who won both the Selke and Conn Smythe Trophies and the Stanley Cup in 2018-19 would be outlandish, but he’s certainly better than the player he has been for the moribund Blues this season. And to have a chance to shine for what is essentially his hometown team will undoubtedly be a motivating factor for the man they call ‘The Factor’. In fact, he has more in the tank than Joe Thornton or Brian Leetch or Phil Housley or Ron Francis did when they came to the Leafs to try to win a Cup.

“You can just tell they’re trying to win and for myself, it’s fun just to be a part of that mindset,” O’Reilly said. “Obviously, there’s a ton of work that has to happen still, but it’s rejuvenating to be around that kind of energy.”

Even if the Leafs don’t achieve their goal of contending for the Stanley Cup and even if they don’t sign O’Reilly to an extension after this season, this was a deal worth making. If the Leafs don’t advance to the conference final, that pick would be 28^th overall based on their current points percentage. This is a team that needs to win now. If it’s lucky and good, it will. If it’s not, it will become another really good team, like the San Jose Sharks or the Nashville Predators, who did everything right but win a Stanley Cup. O’Reilly gives them a better chance to do that.

Whether he’s among the top-six, as he was for his first two games with the Leafs, or centring the third line, O’Reilly is a significant upgrade. For now, O’Reilly centres the second line, with John Tavares moving to left wing and Mitch Marner on the right side. Acciari centres the fourth line. “I know it’s (playing O’Reilly with Tavares and Marner) something I would have tried at some point for sure,” said Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe. “During my tenure here, (Tavares) and I have talked about him playing the win many different times, but we’ve never had the depth at centre to give it much of a look.”

Well, they do now.