Raw Charge
Summary
Sometimes when you hear breaking news, your mind tends to wander off in weird directions. For instance, while wildly busy at our day job, we happened to look our phone and notice that the Tampa Bay Lightning had recalled Sam O’Reilly from the Syracuse Crunch. O’Reilly will take the roster spot vacated by Brayden Point, who was placed on injured reserve. Now, our first thought was, can we leave work early in order to write about it? The answer to that was no. Our second thought was, did he get recalled early enough to have his rookie card inserted into Series II of this year’s Upper Deck flagship product? The answer to that is – maybe? Chances are he’ll be in the extended edition, but there is a small chance they can work him into the product. Of course, when a piece of cardboard with his likeness on it is a fairly inconsequential part of his career equation, but it’s been awhile since the Lightning have had a rookie that can command more than a few bucks on secondary market in the hockey card world. The O’Reilly call-up did catch us a little by surprise as well. It was our opinion (that we’ll express on the next Backchecking the Bolts podcast) that Dominic James, Lucas Mercuri, or Jakob Pelletier would be ahead of O’Reilly on the recall list. In fact, we were quite adamant about it. It’s not necessarily because of his play just twelve games into his pro career. It’s the fact that he’s only had 12 games. The Bolts are normally pretty careful with their prospects, and we’ve been pretty consistent in the belief that the 20-year-old would be best served spending the season with the Crunch and acclimating to the professional life in the AHL. He’s had a decent start, putting up four points (two goals, two assists) so far this season. Three of those points came in a five-game stretch, and he’s currently on a three-game pointless streak. It will be interesting to see how the Lightning deploy him. It’s unlikely they called him up to ride the pine, so we expect him to play as long as he’s in a Lightning uniform. Even with Point injured, the Lightning have more than their fair share of centers. Anthony Cirelli, Yanni Gourde, Zemgus Girgensons, and Conor Geekie will more than likely stay as the primary pivotmen in Point’s absence. O’Reilly was on the ice and taking drills at practice on Tuesday, but there were enough absences that it is almost impossible to divine any type of line combinations. Cirelli and Brandon Hagel (along with Emil Lilleberg) were off of the ice due to maintenance days, so one should necessarily read too much into O’Reilly taking reps with Jake Guentzel and Yanni Gourde, but you never know. Coach Cooper might throw him in the deep end and see if he can swim. If we had to speculate the lines, we think they might look like this: Brandon Hagel – Anthony Cirelli – Nikita Kucherov Jake Guentzel – Yanni Gourde – Gage Goncalves Pontus Holmberg – Zemgus Girgensons – Ilya Mikheyev Jeff Viel – Conor Geekie – Sam O’Reilly The nice thing is that playing in the bottom-six as a rookie plays to O’Reilly’s skillset. His ability to defend all from one end of the ice to the other is his greatest asset, and he will be able to do it with Geekie and Viel. Could he see special teams time? Maybe. After all, the Bolts could use a little help on the penalty kill. which currently sits 24th in the league at 72.9%. Is there a chance that O’Reilly takes the opportunity and runs with it? Of course, there is a reason he earned the top spot in the 2026 Top 20 Under 25. He plays a smart, relentless game that prioritizes defense, but has plenty of room for offense. If he plays well during his undetermined stretch of time he could give the Lightning second thoughts about sending him back to Syracuse. Dominic James and Charle-Edouard D’Astous did it last year, and the base of talent O’Reilly brings to the ice is a couple notches above those two players. Speaking to reporters about O’Reilly, assistant coach Dan Hinote had this to say, “He’s a very headsy player. You saw that in camp where he actually reminds me a lot of the other O’Reilly [Ryan O’Reilly] that I coached in Nashville. (He’s) Very smart, always in the right position. There’s going to be knocks on certain parts of his game that really aren’t a knock because he outthinks it.” Just the fact that he is going to take to the ice as a 20-year-old puts him in pretty rare company among Lightning players. Since 2007-08, only eleven players have played games for Tampa Bay in their age-20 season. The most recent was Geekie, who put up 14 points in 52 games during the 2024-25 season. The most productive 20-year-old in Lightning history was, you guessed it, Steven Stamkos, who put up 45 goals and 91 points back in 2010-11.* As for Point, there is no indication on how long he may be out. Since he was officially placed on injured reserve with an unspecified lower-body injury, he does have to miss seven days from his injury (which occurred on Sunday). He will not be eligible to play against Buffalo or Columbus, but could return for the weekend. The Lightning aren’t likely to rush him back It wouldn’t be a surprise if O’Reilly has a fairly big cheering section in Buffalo on Wednesday for his debut considering he grew up in somewhat nearby Toronto. *The others: Mikhail Sergachev, Anthony Cirelli, Brayden Point, Jonathan Drouin, Nikita Kucherov, Brett Connolly, Victor Hedman, Kevin Quick, and Ty Wishart