A long history of skirmishes on the ice connects Ryan Reaves and Tom Wilson. At one point Reaves went as far as casting himself in 2021 as the fix that rival teams needed for their so-called Wilson headache.
Ask Reaves these days about his supposed archrival, though, and the two turn out to be rather friendly away from the rink.
During a Tuesday turn on the podcast hosted by Cam and Strick, Reaves spoke highly of his counterpart, observing that for all their on-ice scraps, getting to know him off the rink had shown him to be a genuinely decent person and an outstanding competitor.
Those kind words answered directly the way Wilson had characterized the rivalry during his own appearance on that podcast in the spring — May, specifically — of 2020.
Hockey, Wilson remarked back then, is a tight-knit universe, and he sensed an obvious mutual understanding that the pair would probably be buddies if they happened to wear the same sweater.
After the hosts resurfaced those earlier comments for him, Reaves backed the sentiment fully, insisting twice over that the two of them most certainly would be.
Wilson had additionally predicted the men would grab a drink together at some future point, and that call apparently proved accurate. As Reaves tells it, he hung around with his counterpart quite a bit at the wedding, held in July 2023, of Chandler Stephenson, a former teammate the two share.
Things between the two men hadn't always been so cordial, of course. As far back as 2019, Reaves made his loathing plain, still stung by a bruising Stanley Cup Final loss the previous summer — a defeat dealt by Wilson's Capitals while Reaves suited up for the Golden Knights out of Las Vegas.
In that conversation with Jeff Marek of Sportsnet, Reaves spelled out that he had no fondness for the man, flatly declaring his dislike of him.
The pair have, in fact, squared off with the gloves off on merely two occasions, each one coming while Reaves skated for St. Louis. Nonetheless, he reckons the bad blood peaked during his Las Vegas days. That period, per his Tuesday comments, represented the zenith of their on-ice loathing — the seasons spent in Vegas plus that championship-round loss the Knights pinned on his Blues.
Reaves got nudged into recalling a punishing blindside check he dished out to his rival in 2018, one that drove the Washington winger's head down to the ice. For it, Reaves drew a five-minute major on an interference call and got ejected from the game.
Honestly, Reaves explained, he never regarded the play as a foul, never judged it to be late, and walked away with neither a fine nor a suspension. He allowed that the other guy had been watching where his pass went a touch, yet noted that seeing a player's skull ricochet against the surface is something nobody enjoys.
Some years later, Wilson granted his own pardon, casting his rival as an essential ingredient of the game. With a laugh in 2020, Wilson observed that he'd been crunched by the man a time or two, said one respects that style of play, and deemed it a good thing for the sport to roster guys of his kind — quick, relentless competitors.
Today Reaves lumps his former adversary in with elite names — Matthew Tkachuk being one — guys who fill the scoresheet while keeping a physical streak. That breed, he raved, amounts to a kind of unicorn — an uncommon class of big bodies capable of scoring goals, throwing thunderous checks, and truly competing.