During the midpoint of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 2024-25 season, it hadn’t gone unnoticed that Ryan Reaves had gone without a fight while many others had. Reaves did eventually get one fighter to dance with him: Columbus Blue Jackets forward Mathieu Olivier dropped the mitts with the now former Maple Leaf.
Reaves was a guest on 'Leafs Morning Take' with hosts Nick Alberga and Jay Rosehill and explained the circumstances of having just the lone fight for the year. He detailed a series of missed opportunities and scratches: "Beginning of the season, we played New Jersey (Devils), second game of the season. I got scratched right away. We played Columbus, I think, soon after that. Olivier had a broken hand. We played Philly twice. (Nicolas) Delauriers was hurt for both those games. I believe I was scratched for one of those games. Then we played Jersey again. I played, (Kurtis) MacDermid didn't play. MacDermid played, I didn't play,” Reaves said.
He further elaborated on the limited pool of opponents and his frustrations with playing time: “There's not a lot of heavies that are going to fight me, right? And so, if I'm missing, right there, that's six, seven games of playing against heavies. That's just kind of the circumstance of what I was dealt this year. Definitely not my design, definitely not what I wanted to do. Obviously, my role is to fight, and I would love to have done it a little bit more. Those guys I didn't play against, and also, I was scratched a ton this year. That's just kind of the facts,” he explained.
There was one situation before Reaves’ fight with Olivier where he tried to challenge Montreal Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj, but the Montreal player rebuffed Reaves’ overtures. I personally think Reaves was a bit unlucky with the circumstances, and he did cite frustration with his lack of playing time.
Reaves admitted he requested a trade out of Toronto during his end-of-season interview with Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving. That was granted on July 10th when Reaves was traded to the San Jose Sharks for defenseman Henry Thrun. His departure marked the end of a unique tenure with the Maple Leafs.
Top image credit: Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images)
This article originally appeared on The Hockey News: Ryan Reaves Explains Why He Only Dropped the Gloves Once With Maple Leafs Last Season
