Ryan Reaves is one of the few fighters left in hockey and even if he’s a more modern version of the classic goon, he still has an old-school mentality.
Reaves signed a two-year deal to stay in Las Vegas this offseason and the Winnipeg native was recently on TSN 1290 to talk about his offseason, his experience in Vegas and the upcoming season. As it usually does with Vegas players, the “Vegas Hangover” came up and Reaves had a pretty unique take on the whole theory.
Basically, he’s saying if you can’t play hockey hungover, you don’t deserve to be in the NHL.
This mentality actually isn’t totally unfounded in the NHL, though.
We’ve seen former player Mike Commodore share a similar sentiment and John Tortorella took things a step further. Torts thinks playing “guilty” is a part of the game.
Perhaps Reaves is just thinking one step ahead. If players continue to think that the Vegas Hangover isn’t real, then the Golden Knights can keep taking advantage of them at home.
They ended up going 29-10-2 at home.
