The title of ‘Most Valuable Player’ and Tampa Bay Lightning forward prospect Sam O’Reilly have become somewhat synonymous this year.
That’s what happens when you win again and again.
O’Reilly put the finishing touches on a storied junior hockey career last weekend, helping the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers win the 2026 Memorial Cup. He scored a goal and added three assists during Sunday’s 6-2 win over the WHL’s Everett Silvertips in the Memorial Cup Final and was named the tournament’s most valuable player.
“You can't teach that,” Lightning Director of Player Development JP Cote said of O’Reilly’s big-game mentality. “Some players just elevate their game, and you take note of those things…That's when you want the players to shine, in big moments and the playoffs. We saw Brandon Hagel this year, he just took a step in the playoffs, and that's the kind of player that Sam is as well. It's exciting to have one of those guys in the pipeline.”
O’Reilly’s Memorial Cup MVP honor was just the latest accomplishment for the First Round pick, as it wasn’t his lone MVP title this season—the forward also received the Wayne Gretzky ‘99’ Award as MVP of the OHL playoffs by scoring 17 goals and 28 points in 18 postseason games.
Those honors followed a regular season campaign in which he scored 29 goals and 71 points in 56 games on his way to being named the 2026 Red Tilson Trophy winner, given to the OHL’s most outstanding player.
He is just the third player in OHL history to be named regular season MVP, playoff MVP and Memorial Cup MVP in one campaign, joining Mitch Marner, Corey Perry and Brad Richards.
“It’s an award that shows how good of a team we had this year, and it’s a big honor with all the names that have won it beforehand,” O’Reilly said. “I take it with a lot of pride.”
Trophies have followed the 20-year-old forward throughout this junior career—He became the third player in OHL history to win three consecutive OHL titles (teammate Jared Woolley and Scott Timmins in ’08-10) and played in the OHL Final in all four of his junior seasons.
This marks O’Reilly’s second consecutive Memorial Cup championship after winning in 2025 with the London Knights.
O’Reilly begins his pro career with loads of playoff experience at the junior level, something he feels helped his game and has better prepared him for a jump to pro hockey.
“It's the biggest time of the year and it’s the best time of the year. It’s when you’ve got to be playing your best hockey and leave it all out there, and I think that's when I’m at my best,” O’Reilly said. “We had a great team this year, which was awesome, and I think it goes a long way as you move on and head into pro hockey. Playing up there is obviously a huge change, but I think playing in the playoffs these last few years was a big help to me.”
Development and the future
O’Reilly was named captain in London ahead of the 2025-26 season and scored 12 goals and 28 points across 28 games before being traded to Kitchener.
The offense bloomed further for the right-shooting youngster following an OHL trade in January, who scored 17 goals and 43 points in just 28 games with London.
Only a few games after joining Kitchener, O’Reilly was already an alternate captain. That doesn’t happen for many players, and Cote pointed to that this spring.
“He was exactly what they needed,” Cote said. “I remember talking to Sam when he was just joining the team. He said, ‘I'm gonna bring a little more grit and responsibility to this team.’ He thought that's exactly what he needed, and to his credit, that's exactly what he brought, and the team just took off. I think it was a perfect match, and playing with high-level, skilled players worked out for him in Kitchener.”
The 20-year-old center was acquired by the Lightning last summer in a trade with the Edmonton Oilers.
The day after the trade, Cote connected him with skating coach Barb Underhill, who continues to work with O’Reilly on refining his skating. Cote has seen a great improvement in O’Reilly’s skating since joining the organization, but it remains the forward’s biggest focus ahead of his professional debut.
O’Reilly’s game focuses on making the simple play and defense while mixing in offense when given the chance. The emphasis is reliability, and that’s part of what allowed his strong postseason.
“Playing desperate hockey, that’s what I like to play. It’s just being reliable. Obviously in the playoffs one mistake leads to the big plays, so it’s about being focused on every single play and trying to play playoff hockey.”
Those within the Lightning organization see that.
“His positioning without the puck, and the use of his stick, he's underrated in a way where you don't really notice him on the ice doing those things, but he's always in the way, he's always giving that extra stride that's going to allow him to be well positioned defensively,” Cote said. “Those are things that are hard to teach, but when it's in a guy’s game already, it's a plus. With a lot of guys, we’re trying to work with Joel (Bouchard) at the AHL level on how you want to finish on the right side of guys, you want to finish in front, you want to go stick first. All of those little details will relate really well to pro hockey, and he's got that in his toolbox already.”
