LNN: Stützle First Star, Leafs Acquire O’Reilly, and more

Thanks to the Family Day long weekend, the usual Monday edition of Links, News, and Notes was pushed to Tuesday so that your loyal scribe could drive home after spending the weekend with ....family. I hope you all didn’t miss the feature too much in its absence.

Here’s what’s been going on in the hockey world:

• Though he didn’t find the scoresheet yesterday, you may have heard that Tim Stützle was named the NHL’s first star of the week for his ten points (!) in four games. Not much else to say here besides: “He’s really good!”
• Ian Mendes’ Notebook this week had some good tidbits about the impending sale of the team, as well as his thoughts on the Motte trade.
• Speaking of the Motte trade, Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille gave the Sens a “B” and a “B-” respectively in their write-up for the Athletic. That’s maybe a bit more generous than I would have been, but it’s in the right range: Gauthier hasn’t shown much in the NHL but he’s a big guy who skates well and was once-highly regarded. For a pending UFA of Motte’s calibre, this was probably about what you could have expected Dorion to get. With the team’s injuries, and general lack of depth in the bottom six, Gauthier is likely to get an extended shot to show what he can do.
• The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired Ryan O’Reilly from the St. Louis Blues on Friday. Meghan Chayka breaks down the trade for TSN with some analytics, and I must say that I don’t enjoy the feeling of the Leafs having made a good move.
• Devante Smith-Pelly recently sat down with Raegan Subban from TSN to talk about his hockey journey; a worthwhile chat.
• Over at ESPN, the latest power rankings had a cool additional feature: the “best” trade made by each team for the last five years. No big surprise as to which one was selected for the Sens.
• And, lastly, a quick update on our Go Fund Me campaign: we hit our initial target on the first day, which is truly incredible. I cannot express how much this means to us. Given the incredible success, we’ve increased our goal to $5k — every dollar raised will go towards making the next iteration of Silver Seven the best it can possibly be. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts./