NHL Tough Guy Ryan Reaves Attends Golden Knights Event And Breaks News He'll Play For One Of Their Rivals
Reaves could learn a thing or two about timing.
NHL tough guy Ryan Reaves certainly picked a strange time to let people know he had found a new team for the 2025-26 season.
On July 10, Reeves was traded from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the San Jose Sharks. It will be the seventh team that he plays for in his 16-year career.
For four of those years, he called Vegas home as a member of the Golden Knights and was part of the team that made it to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2018 in the franchise’s first year of existence.
Because of his connection to "Sin City" hockey, he was in town for the "Battle for Vegas" on Thursday, a charity softball event played by Las Vegas sports stars. Reeves and Riley Smith did a meet-and-greet with fans while there, and that was the spot the former enforcer revealed the news about his trade.
"They may start hating me pretty soon because I just got traded to the Sharks. We’ll see how that goes with the fans," Reeves said.
Fans would have found out soon enough that the trade happened, since X and ESPN are just a couple of clicks away. But that’s still a weird place to voluntarily break the news. That would be like working at Fox News, going to a company party, and saying "Hey I just accepted a role at CNN!" That would have gone over like a fart in church.
The Sharks and the Golden Knights are in the Pacific Division, and that level of familiarity between the teams has fed into a strong rivalry for the past seven or eight years. In fact, in the 2019 playoffs, the Sharks had one of the craziest Game 7 comebacks ever to eliminate the Knights in the first round.
Furthermore, the Knights signed Tomas Hertl, a former Shark, from San Jose, helping trigger an extensive rebuild for the Sharks. All that to say, the teams aren’t on the friendliest of terms.
Reeves probably left unscathed, since no one would want to pick a fight with him. But still, a charity softball game in Vegas probably isn’t the best time to reveal you've been traded to a rival.