Yeah he's consistently a 1st line center. 60 points a year is a 1st line player. He led the led the league in icetime for forwards 2 seasons ago and came in the top 10 again this year. Totally a 2nd line player.O'Reilly gets the tough defensive zone matchups because he's elite at the faceoff dot and is elite defensively. Jack Eichel takes more of the offensive zone starts because "gasp" he's an elite young offensive player and his defensive game is nowhere near O'Reilly's. This isn't really that difficult to grasp. If you'd like I can get the crayons out for you and draw you a picture.
You can argue ice time, defensive zone starts, etc. etc. all you want. Anybody with half a brain knows the guy simply isn't a #1C.
You completely ignore so many factors when spewing your stats it's actually hilarious. ROR was Top 10 in ice time and yet he still only managed 34 even strength points, not exactly impressive. Of course in actual reality he led the league in ice time because he played major PP minutes and major PK minutes, which have very little effect on calling the guy a 1C, the majority of 1Cs dont play heavy PK minutes like O'Reilly does because they're much more useful at even strength and generate points.
ROR starts a lot of his shifts in the Defensive zone? That's because the ENTIRE BUFFALO SABRES team starts the majority of their shifts in the Defensive zone. Bad teams tend to have this happen to them.
Being elite at face-offs has nothing to do with being a 1C either. Derek Ryan is elite at faceoffs is he a 1C? Evgeni Malkin is awful at them, does that make him not a 1C?
Is Nazem Kadri a 1C? He had more even strength points(36 versus ROR's 34), in less games, getting less ice time, tougher matchups, and an even lower Offensive Zone start% on a team that actually started more then 50% of its shifts in the offensive zone?
Patrice Bergeron is the best two-way player in the game but he started 60% of his shifts in the offensive zone. Do you know why(Obviously you dont)? Because he's also an elite player who creates a tonne of offense at even strength so his coach puts him out in favorable situations to create this offense. That's what 1Cs do. It doesn't matter if they're elite defensively or not. A 1C has to be able to generate high end offense on the PP but especially at even strength. Ryan O'Reilly plain and simple does not do this at the rate a 1C does.
It's his defensive game that makes him a truly elite 2C and one of the very best in the game because he can take those difficult defensive assignments and harder minutes and not only play the role fairly well, but also can create some offense in those minutes. But he doesn't create offense well enough to be a 1C. If he did he would get more opportunities and favorable minutes to do so. But he cant.
Call Ryan O'Reilly a #1C is actually an insult to the legit #1Cs in the league who play those extremely tough defensive minutes and on top of that produce offense at elite 5 on 5 numbers. Alex Barkov(Who plays even tougher minutes then O'Reilly), Patrice Bergeron, Anze Kopitar, Sean Couturier.
Those are the #1Cs who actually play tough minutes and also generate major offense in those tough minutes. Ryan O'Reilly is not one of those guys.
The frustrating part of this argument is I actually love ROR's game and would absolutely in a second trade for him to be the 2C behind the Avs. He's elite at what he does. But arguing that he's a 2C and using stats to back it up, but failing to use the stats in proper context is incredibly frustrating and now you've got me taking what looks like an extremely negative stance on one of my favorite players in the game today. Calling him an elite 2C is not an insult to him at all. There's very, very few players in the league who are better at what they do then ROR. Nazem Kadri might be the only one. But neither guy is a #1C.
Ask Leaf fans if they think Kadri is a 1C. I guarantee you 90% of them will say no but he's one of the best 2Cs in the game. The exact same thing applies to O'Reilly.
