Ryan Reaves changes his tune on Tom Wilson after hanging out with him at Chandler Stephenson’s wedding: ‘He’s a great guy. He’s a great player.’

Tom Wilson and Ryan Reaves have quite the history of on-ice tiffs. The latter even went so far as to declare himself the “solution” to teams’ “Tom Wilson problem” in 2021.

However, if you ask Reaves now about his so-called nemesis, they’re actually quite chummy in real life.

“Willy’s a great player,” he told the Cam and Strick Podcast on Tuesday. “We’ve had our differences on ice but I’ve met him off ice, he’s a great guy… He’s a great player.”

Reaves’ praise was directly responding to Wilson’s own assessment of their rivalry when he was on the same podcast in May of 2020.

“It’s a small world, the hockey world, I think there’s definitely a mutual understanding there that if he was on my team we’d probably be pals,” Wilson said then.

“100 percent we would be,” Reaves affirmed when the hosts recalled Wilson’s past comments to him. “100 percent we would.”

Wilson even predicted the two would someday “have a beer down the road,” and that apparently came to fruition. According to Reaves, he “hung out with him a ton” at mutual teammate Chandler Stephenson’s wedding in July of 2023.

Wilson and Reaves, of course, didn’t always used to be this cordial. The latter declared his hatred back in 2019, 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.

“I just don’t like him. Hands down, I just don’t like the guy,” he told Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek.

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.

“That was kind of the peak of us hating each other on the ice, those years in Vegas and them beating us in the finals,” he said Tuesday.

Reaves was reminded of a crunching blindside hit he delivered to Wilson in 2018, 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.

“To be honest, I didn’t think that was interference,” he recalled. “[I] didn’t think it was late, I didn’t get a fine or suspension… Yeah, he was looking at his pass a little bit [but] you don’t want to see guys’ heads bounce off the ice obviously.”

Wilson himself was able to forgive him years later, defending Reaves as a necessary evil of the sport.

“He’s crunched me a couple of times,” he said chuckling in 2020. “You respect his game… It’s great to have guys like that in the league, he’s fast, he plays hard… It’s good for the game.”

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.

“Those are kind of unicorns, guys like that,” he praised. “You don’t see that often, big guys who can put the puck in the net, make big hits and can really play.”