Sam O'reilly

Just from playing against him and watching him, obviously he's got a ton of speed and he's really good on winning puck battles and I think that's going to be good for our line of guys that can really win the puck and get it to Cooch and we can get open for him.

Sam O'Reilly is looking to push for a roster spot.

His approach to this camp.

Kind of just looking at what they do, watching pretty tightly on the little stuff that they do and try to put it in my game and Whenever I have a question, I just go up to one of the guys and ask them.

I want to see Braden Point, all the work that he's put in.

How does that translate into the first 15, 20 games of the regular season? Are you seeing a noticeable difference? Sam O'Reilly, does he make the team? What kind of impact would he have? So there's a lot of things, but this is going to be a completely different team than last year.

Well, I don't know about completely different, but...

They did bring in some players during the offseason, notably Ilya Mikheyev and Jeffrey Vielle, and they acquired Dennis Hildeby to be the backup goalie.

So one group was on one sheet, the other group was on the other sheet.

And that was kind of a split between we'll just say the NHL regulars and the guys who are either on the bubble or maybe we're curious to see how they do, even if they don't necessarily make the team.

For example, Sam O'Reilly is in, you know, we'll just call it one of the later groups.

So is Benjamin Rautiainen.

So they're real, real baby rules.

lightning players that it can play in this but there are some good names that we've talked about like sam o'reilly was in the tournament benjamin ralty inan was in the tournament uh and it was fun the lightning so the first day i'll just tell you we didn't look great we didn't it kind of showed like the lightnings we hear this all the time the prospect pool is depleted because we spend all of our our picks to chase cups like yeah that looked to be true on the first day.

Sam O'Reilly was in.

Benjamin Rotianen was in.

Dylan Duke wasn't in.

He was our best player.

He scored our goal.

And it was like, that's great, but I wanted to see Benjamin Rotianian take over, right? I wanted to see Sam O'Reilly take over.

This to me was one of the most fascinating things, uh, a little bit of a sidebar here.

About last year was that that trade that brought Sam O'Reilly and Jared Woolley ... or trades, uh, I can't remember if it was one or two, uh, from London to Kitchener, that managed to boost the draft stock of a defenseman on both teams.

Because Alexander Bilecki got slotted, you know, further down the lineup in Kitchener, but that allowed him to learn from Woolley and then Andonoski, whereas Woolley leaving London meant that Maxim Sokolovsky, who ended up being a first-rounder for Philly, got more ice time.

So somehow Jared Woolley, uh, benefited two different players on two different teams.

It makes me think that they're really sold on playing him a lot.

That's why I'm like, "Ah, I kinda think he's gonna play a fair amount." But also, the other part of me is like, you got Sam O'Reilly cooking and Geekie, and there's, like, so many names in this prospect pool.

Like, why are they not just, like, coming up here and playing this role, you know? I don't know the answer to that.

I'm gonna guess that he plays...

Like I, I like that Cole Eiserman's on this list.

A guy I'm really, really intrigued with, do not sleep on him, Sam O'Reilly with the Tampa Bay Lightning too, Pete.

There's a lot of different guys to look at here.

There's Victor Eklund with the Islanders and Eiserman, who you mentioned.

Geekie is one of them.

Sam O'Reilly is turning pro this year.

He's kinda in the pipeline.

So now you've got some, some competition among some of these younger players, and Routinen is right there, right? He did things that, what, Saku Koivu was the last guy to put up those kinda points at an under 21 age in Finland, which is not typically a huge scoring league.

The other model, JFresh, Advanced Hockey Stats, has Chugabay at less than 1% chance of being a star and a 3% chance of being an NHLer, which we're accustomed to them being more pessimistic, Jesse, so that kind of fits right in line.

And who's the keep your eye on prospect, Victor?

Keep your eye on would be Sam O'Reilly, the 2024 32nd overall pick, 6'1", 190 pounds.

Sam O'Reilly was taken, I just mentioned where he was taken, but he is a back-to-back Memorial Cup winner.

Now, there's some players that you had mentioned to me that you really want to look out for.

First of all, that's Sam O'Reilly.

Sam O'Reilly comes in.

There's a lot of talk that he could be on the outside looking in to make the Lightning his first year in professional hockey.

What are you looking for out of Sam?

So that's kind of what I'm looking for out of O'Reilly, just the little details of the game that provide success at the NHL

level.

With Sam O'Reilly, I can't imagine the Lightning wanting to play him on the fourth line and play him eight to ten minutes a game.