Do you wonder how Jason Botterill enjoyed the Stanley Cup finals?

I do.

St. Louis’ Game 7 victory over Boston for the Blues’ first NHL title in their 52-year existence was at least a short-term reminder that the Sabres’ general manager, barely a month into his third season, came up on the very short end of the “blockbuster” deal he made less than a year ago.

That’s when he traded popular center and team leader Ryan O’Reilly to St. Louis for three forwards and two draft picks.

The trio of centers — Tage Thompson, Vladimir Sobotka and Patrik Berglund — were packaged with a first round pick in Friday’s NHL draft in Vancouver — 31st and last due to the Blues’ Cup victory — and a second-rounder in 2021.

Those two entities might eventually equalize the trade, but the three centers were a collective bust this season: Thompson (7 goals, 5 assists, 12 points), Sobotka (5, 8, 13) and Berglund (2, 2, 4) combined to play 157 games and produced a mere 14 goals, 15 assists and 29 points.

O’Reilly?

Well, he played all 82 regular-season games scoring 28 goals with 49 assists for 77 points and is a finalist for the Selke Trophy (best defensive forward) and Lady Byng award (sportsmanlike, gentlemanly conduct) which will be presented tomorrow night in Las Vegas.

But it was in the playoffs that the 28-year-old former Sabre really starred.

He played each of St. Louis’ 26 post-season games scoring eight goals with 15 assists for 23 points, the most ever in the playoffs by a Blues player.

Five of those goals came in the last four games and he became the first player since Wayne Gretzky in 1985 to score in four consecutive Stanley Cup final games.

For that performance, he was an easy choice as the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as MVP of the NHL postseason.

In fairness, Botterill was in a spot.

For all his leadership and role as a fan favorite, O’Reilly was an expensive piece of a team that had needs most everywhere.

There was also the fact that he had spent three miserable seasons in Buffalo with nary a playoff appearance.

Indeed, during locker cleanout last season O’Reilly admitted he had “lost the love of the game” several times during the year.

Still, he was a hard guy to send packing.

Unlike the trade of Evander Kane to San Jose a year earlier, which was seen as addition by subtraction due to several off-ice incidents, dealing O’Reilly was a calculated risk.

Circumstantially, the trade that sent Kane and Brendan Guhle to the Sharks paid some dividends as the Sabres turned the two draft picks into defenseman Brandon Montour (20 games: 3 goals, 7 assists, 10 points) and winger Conor Sheary (78 games: 14, 20, 34).

But, at least for now, they’re not even close to that payback for the Sabres in the O’Reilly deal.

Thus, Buffalo’s futility continues.

The stretch without a playoff appearance extended to eight seasons in April, despite a team-record 10-game win streak that propelled the Sabres temporarily to the top of the NHL standings on Nov. 28, before going 16-33-8 (wins, losses, overtime defeats) the rest of the way to finish 13th of 16 Eastern Conference teams.

This is a team that since Terry and Kim Pegula bought the team in 2011, has gone through a president (Pat LaFontaine), three general managers (Darcy Regier, Tim Murray and now Botterill) and six coaches  (Lindy Ruff, Ron Rolston, Ted Nolan, Dan Bylsma, Phil Housley and now Ralph Krueger).

But here’s the real problem.

Of the four major sports, the NHL is the easiest in which to go from last to first.

Last season, the EXPANSION Vegas Golden Knights won the Pacific Division going away and advanced through three rounds of the playoffs before losing to Washington in the Stanley Cup finals.

This year, the Blues fired their coach in November, had a league-worst 34 points on Jan. 2 and went on to win the NHL title in seven games.

Yet here are the Sabres, for eight straight seasons, not even getting a sniff of the playoffs, finishing eighth, and last, in the Atlantic Division four times in the previous six years and seventh and sixth in the others.

Botterill has to be wondering how much patience Buffalo fans possess … especially after what O’Reilly did this past season.

(Chuck Pollock, a Bradford Publishing Company senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)