RockLobster
King in the North
As I said, we talked hockey for about an hour at the KSE dinner. I asked him about a lot including the Kovalchuk situation and the thought processing behind drafting Mack and not Seth Jones. He was very open and friendly, and he could tell that I was a hockey FAN, not a hockey reporter, so he wasn't apprehensive about answering my questions.
Doubt it if you want, but you can look back at Duchene's interviews when O'Reilly was holding out, and you can sense the animosity in his answers regarding ROR. The speculation is on whether or not they've reconciled, but we have to assume that they have being that they were linemates all of last year. The issue wasn't with their personalities, it was the mutual criticism of business decisions during contract negotiations. ROR thought Duchene took too little and Duchene thought ROR wanted too much.
It's all too convenient to come in here and say things like you said last night and have the Anti-O'Reilly sector glob on to it.
I mean it was awfully convenient of you to last night just say:
The tension between Duchene and O'Reilly, which seemed to be fabricated by Dater, was actually very real. Obviously they reconciled their differences over time once he was a part of the team again.
But not clarify like you just did--saying it was "mutual criticism of business decisions". Your original statement makes it sound like there was personal beef between them and that's exactly what people grabbed on to.