{"id":53291,"date":"2025-07-10T05:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T05:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/53291\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T05:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T05:22:08","slug":"ryan-reaves-changes-his-tune-on-tom-wilson-after-hanging-out-with-him-at-chandler-stephensons-wedding-hes-a-great-guy-hes-a-great-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/53291\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Reaves changes his tune on Tom Wilson after hanging out with him at Chandler Stephenson\u2019s wedding: \u2018He\u2019s a great guy. He\u2019s a great player.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Wilson<\/strong> and Ryan Reaves<\/strong> have quite the history of on-ice tiffs. The latter even went so far as to declare himself the \u201csolution\u201d to teams\u2019 \u201cTom Wilson problem\u201d in 2021.<\/a><\/p>\n

However, if you ask Reaves now about his so-called nemesis, they\u2019re actually quite chummy in real life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWilly\u2019s a great player,\u201d he told the Cam and Strick Podcast on Tuesday<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve had our differences on ice but I\u2019ve met him off ice, he\u2019s a great guy\u2026 He\u2019s a great player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaves\u2019 praise was directly responding to Wilson\u2019s own assessment of their rivalry when he was on the same podcast in May of 2020.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a small world, the hockey world, I think there\u2019s definitely a mutual understanding there that if he was on my team we\u2019d probably be pals,\u201d Wilson said then.<\/p>\n

\u201c100 percent we would be,\u201d Reaves affirmed when the hosts recalled Wilson\u2019s past comments to him. \u201c100 percent we would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson even predicted the two would someday \u201chave a beer down the road,\u201d and that apparently came to fruition. According to Reaves, he \u201chung out with him a ton\u201d at mutual teammate Chandler Stephenson\u2019s wedding in July of 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wilson and Reaves, of course, didn\u2019t always used to be this cordial. The latter declared his hatred back in 2019<\/a>, still fresh off a stinging Stanley Cup Finals loss to Wilson and the Washington Capitals the summer prior when he was a member of the Las Vegas Golden Knights.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t like him. Hands down, I just don\u2019t like the guy,\u201d he told Sportsnet\u2019s Jeff Marek.<\/p>\n

The two have squared up on just a pair of occasions, both when Reaves played for the St. Louis Blues. But he still thinks their feud was at a fever pitch during his Vegas tenure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was kind of the peak of us hating each other on the ice, those years in Vegas and them beating us in the finals,\u201d he said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Reaves was reminded of a crunching blindside hit he delivered to Wilson in 2018<\/a>, causing the Caps winger to hit his head on the ice. Reaves was assessed a five-minute major for interference and ejected from the game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I didn\u2019t think that was interference,\u201d he recalled. \u201c[I] didn\u2019t think it was late, I didn\u2019t get a fine or suspension\u2026 Yeah, he was looking at his pass a little bit [but] you don\u2019t want to see guys\u2019 heads bounce off the ice obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson himself was able to forgive him years later, defending Reaves as a necessary evil of the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s crunched me a couple of times,\u201d he said chuckling in 2020. \u201cYou respect his game\u2026 It\u2019s great to have guys like that in the league, he\u2019s fast, he plays hard\u2026 It\u2019s good for the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaves now considers Wilson in the same category as elite players like Matthew Tkachuk, contributing on the score sheet while also maintaining a physical presence on the ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are kind of unicorns, guys like that,\u201d he praised. \u201cYou don\u2019t see that often, big guys who can put the puck in the net, make big hits and can really play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Wilson and Ryan Reaves have quite the history of on-ice tiffs. The latter even went so far…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-53291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}