Sam O'Reilly showing early signs of why Oilers moved up to draft him

On Sunday, the Edmonton Oilers made their next round of cuts to the roster ahead of the regular season home opener on Oct. 9, versus the Winnipeg Jets. As per the team's official website, this included Matt Savoie and Seth Griffith heading to Bakersfield with the Condors, while Cam Dineen and Connor Carrick were placed on waivers for the same purpose.

The Oilers' other move involved Sam O'Reilly returning to the Knights in the OHL. However, he heads back to London with his head held high, after an impressive showing during training camp and preseason.

O'Reilly appeared in four preseason games for the Oilers, which included scoring an beautiful goal in his first appearance and going on to total six shots overall. This is impressive, given he was lining up alongside players equivalent to an NHL fourth line.

An impressive jump for O'Reilly

Making O'Reilly's strong performances even more impressive, is his tender age of just 18 and taking part in his first NHL training camp. As per Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal, Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said: "It’s a big jump to go from junior to an NHL camp for the first time and we gave him a lot of responsibilities, either in a checking role, or playing with more offensive guys. He had penalty-kill work, some power play time and, everything we gave him, he handled well. He showed why our scouting staff believed in him."

This references why the Oilers did what was necessary to put themselves into position to be able to draft O'Reilly. This involved acquiring the Philadelphia Flyers' first round pick for this year, in return for their own first rounder in either 2025 or 2026 with certain conditions.

O'Reilly's pre-draft scouting report marked him as a strong two-way player, with a high hockey IQ, good passing skills and an excellent work-ethic. His ceiling was projected as a bottom-six NHL forward, but you can arguably amend this to middle-six given his displays in training camp and during the preseason.

As Knoblauch also noted, O'Reilly improved with every passing day. In fact, to the point that Matheson now speculates the young talent is set to receive a three-year entry level deal sometime soon.

For now, O'Reilly will begin the new campaign with the Knights, where he had an impressive 56 points and +32 rating in 68 games last season. Make no mistake though, there is the promise of so much more to come for him in the future with the Oilers.

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