New Buffalo Sabres center Ryan O’Reilly is done with the questions that plagued his tenure with the Colorado Avalanche – the queries about his contract negotiations, his relationships with teammates are finally over.

He’s now a Sabre, and while he acknowledged he enjoyed his time in Colorado, he understood the stigma that he was a guy who had trouble closing a deal to play with the team.

“I think our negotiations have always been kind of difficult and I really think there’s nothing I would have done differently,” he said. “My agent has done phenomenal things for me in my career and this is the next step for me here.”

This is important for the Sabres, since July 1, the team can sign the newly-acquired center to a contract. O’Reilly, 24, is entering the final season of a two-year $12 million contract that was settled right before an arbitration hearing in 2014. Next summer he will be an unrestricted free agent. He had 55 points in 82 games last season and 64 points in 80 contests the year before.

His previous contract was signed as an offer sheet by the Calgary Flames, which Colorado matched.

Judging by O’Reilly’s chipper and enthusiastic tone on the conference call, it didn’t seem like a deal would be difficult, though with him you never know.

“Talking about July 1 is something I look forward to,” O’Reilly said. “I’ve been to Buffalo before. I know a couple of guys on the team, a couple of guys have reached out. I’m excited to get that move forward and get that behind me.”

As most introductory news conference calls go, the topics of conversation were rosy.

O’Reilly on Evander Kane:

“He’s a guy who when you give him a chance, he’s going to bury you so much with his speed and his strength. He’s going to make any team more effective and more dangerous.”

O’Reilly on playing with 2015 No. 2 overall draft pick Jack Eichel:

“For me, just to be around that kind of skill level. He’s a phenomenal player and you have seen in the past that can come in and make a difference right away. That’s huge for anything. Obviously I’m going to try to help and teach whatever I can do to help make him the better player. It’s definitely exciting and going to be an honor to play with him.”

Wow, the veteran guy bowing down to the rookie? Interesting indeed.

In spite of O’Reilly’s rep as a guy who’s constantly chasing bucks, GM/brilliant mad scientist Tim Murray seems to envision a 1-2 punch of O’Reilly and Eichel down the middle for years. And yes, he will have to make O’Reilly the highest-paid Sabre to do this.

O’Reilly said he wants to be a leader on the Sabres and that he wasn’t exactly given that opportunity in Colorado. Burrrrrrrrrrnnnnn? Not really actually. They just had their core and O’Reilly wasn’t really ‘the guy’ in Colorado – a team that has Matt Duchene, Gabriel Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon.

“With Colorado I wasn’t really looked at as much of a leader as I think I have now here with the Sabres,” he said. “I think I’m going to have to be a more vocal guy and be more that off ice leader and on ice as well, but it’s really a challenge.”

There he is folks, the happy-go-lucky strangely unsignable Ryan O’Reilly.

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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