gunning for an NHL roster<\/a> spot ahead of the regular season opener on Oct. 1 at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\nSaturday marked his first appearance on a line with NHL players this camp. He was the only skater in Group A that hasn\u2019t appeared in an NHL game.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Reilly has been watching the usual Lightning cast closely, hoping to copy the finer details of the game. He hasn\u2019t been afraid to ask questions when he has them.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has really good puck skills, can shoot it well and it looks like he\u2019s a smart player,\u201d Lightning forward Brayden Point said of O\u2019Reilly. \u201cHe really sees things well out there, so it\u2019s exciting to have him and I think he\u2019s done great so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adjusting to professional hockey is mostly about speed, but Point doesn\u2019t think that will take O\u2019Reilly very long.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just the speed, the quickness at which things happen,\u201d Point said. \u201cObviously it’s a different game than junior, but for a guy with his smarts it comes quick, so it’s been exciting to watch him.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Reilly just wrapped up a decorated junior hockey career and is fresh off back-to-back Memorial Cup championships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was voted the OHL\u2019s most outstanding player in 2025-26 before being named MVP of both the OHL playoffs and Memorial Cup.<\/p>\n
The Lightning roster for Sunday\u2019s game have not been released, but it could mark another chance for O\u2019Reilly to make an impression.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe obviously see what he did in junior. We saw a little bit of him last year at camp. We like his brain. He’s smart enough to get to places early so he can read plays and understand where it’s going. He kind of has a feel for where the puck’s going, so it’s a sign of a good penalty killer,\u201d assistant coach Rob Zettler said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the end of the day, we’ll see when the real bullets start flying. He’s a great player who won all those awards in junior, and now it\u2019s the NHL versus the big boys. Let\u2019s see what you\u2019ve got, and he’ll get a chance to show it over these next few games.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the eve of the Tampa Bay Lightning\u2019s 2026 preseason opener, young forward Sam O\u2019Reilly found himself positioned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-404735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}