Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Options Author
Thursday morning at Allstate Area will go one thing like the entire different AHL video games that Cal O’Reilly has suited up for going again almost twenty years.
Besides it will likely be completely different.
When O’Reilly hits the ice for the Milwaukee Admirals’ school-day go to to the Chicago Wolves (midday ET, AHLTV on FloHockey), it will likely be the 1,000th regular-season AHL recreation for the 38-year-old ahead, placing him in a category that features solely eight different gamers who’ve reached that milestone. The sturdy O’Reilly has dressed for 45 of Milwaukee’s 49 video games this season and has solely missed seven video games within the one-and-a-half seasons since he returned to Milwaukee, the town the place he started his professional profession in April 2006.
Return to when O’Reilly was a 19-year-old arriving in Milwaukee as a Nashville Predators fifth-round choose. From the time he first suited up for the Admirals – that was a house recreation on April 14, 2006 in opposition to, fittingly, the Wolves – via 19 seasons winding his manner via professional hockey, he has at all times discovered a option to make himself helpful. Again then, he was only a rookie out of the Ontario Hockey League hoping to interrupt into the veteran lineup of a Calder Cup contender. The teachings got here at him rapidly, and so they’re ones that he has carried with him ever since.
“You don’t know what to anticipate,” O’Reilly stated of that first recreation, “and then you definately’re proper into it after which abruptly you’re at a thousand video games.
“You’ll be able to’t take nights off, and it was nice for me to return in earlier than I performed a full 12 months as a result of I obtained a style of it. Noticed what it’s like, noticed what I must do, and it gave me confidence for going into my first full working 12 months.”
Alongside that path he has performed 145 NHL video games, choosing up 49 factors (16 objectives, 33 assists) within the course of. He has come near lifting a Calder Cup, a part of Finals groups with Milwaukee in 2006 and with Utica in 2015. After bringing his profession full-circle and signing with the Admirals in 2023, he helped them to the Western Convention Finals final spring. And with Milwaukee among the many pace-setters within the Central Division, there actually is purpose to suppose that he may be a part of one other prolonged postseason run this 12 months.
O’Reilly’s journey has taken him via Milwaukee, Portland, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Utica, Rochester, Toronto, Iowa, Lehigh Valley and now again to Milwaukee. He has had NHL stops with Nashville, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Minnesota. He has even had components of two seasons within the Kontinental Hockey League.
“I at all times tried to be a extremely good teammate,” O’Reilly defined, “and a superb particular person first and construct relationships with guys on my workforce. I haven’t misplaced that love or the drive or to do what I must do within the summers and in the course of the season to have the ability to maintain enjoying and play at a excessive degree.
“You need individuals to see you as an unselfish, nice teammate.”
Teammate Joakim Kemell was not even two years outdated but when O’Reilly made his professional debut. Milwaukee’s captain, Eleventh-year veteran defenseman Kevin Gravel, is sort of six years youthful than O’Reilly. For that matter, the youngest participant at present within the AHL, 18-year-old Rochester ahead Konsta Helenius, had not but been born when O’Reilly began his professional profession.
On and on these tidbits can go, and O’Reilly’s teammates actually ensure to let him know. Good-naturedly, after all.
However in addition they maintain him in excessive respect. To play almost twenty years of professional hockey is one achievement. To proceed being a helpful piece of a company, to get one contract after one other, may be almost as spectacular. O’Reilly, who has captained the Comets, Amerks, Wild and Phantoms, has at all times been in a position to set up himself and re-invent when vital.
Early in his profession, he wanted to earn the belief of Milwaukee head coaches Claude Noel and Lane Lambert. As a rookie, he rapidly graduated to penalty-killing work. He has at all times been recognized for his sportsmanlike play, by no means amassing greater than 22 penalty minutes in a single season. And as he progressed, he grew to become increasingly of an elite playmaker on the AHL degree and obtained himself to the NHL. However NHL work referred to as for various talent units, and as he transitioned from prospect to veteran to elder statesman, he managed to adapt to new roles as wanted.
AHL Corridor of Famer Darren Haydar served as a template for O’Reilly, although they had been solely teammates briefly towards the tip of that 2005-06 marketing campaign. Again then, Haydar was nearly on the peak of his recreation. O’Reilly is 6-foot, 182 kilos, maybe on the smaller aspect particularly again then. However Haydar was simply 5-9, 160. But he used his imaginative and prescient and hockey sense to change into one of many AHL’s finest offensive abilities ever. Haydar had discovered a manner, O’Reilly figured, so why not him?
“One of many huge issues in my recreation is my mind and utilizing my smarts,” O’Reilly stated, “and I believe that’s helped me for positive maintain enjoying due to that. I believe over my profession, I’ve used my thoughts greater than my physique in that sense.
“[Haydar] wasn’t the quickest man, however he was the neatest, most expert man on the ice, and I type of noticed similarities in myself. It confirmed that I might play the way in which that I performed my complete life even at this degree. He was such an incredible man to me, an exquisite particular person, and I believe he had a giant affect on me arising from junior and seeing the professional life and for the participant he was.”
After all, O’Reilly also can nonetheless produce offensively. He set a profession excessive with 21 objectives in 2021-22. This season his 30 factors (six objectives, 24 assists) have him second in workforce scoring. And with scoring chief Vinnie Hinostroza now with the Minnesota Wild, O’Reilly might nicely quickly take over the workforce’s prime scoring spot.
With O’Reilly’s 1,000th recreation being on the street, the Admirals will honor him at an upcoming house recreation. His spouse and their 4 kids shall be there. So will his mother and father and in-laws together with kinfolk and a few former teammates. Then it will likely be again to enterprise. There are two months to go within the common season, and the Admirals have a playoff push to make. As with a lot of O’Reilly’s profession, he’ll go about caring for the small particulars, making himself helpful for his teaching workers, and contributing.
The Admirals have an opportunity to chase a Calder Cup championship. And whereas his youthful teammates can’t but perceive what it means to construct a profession like his, O’Reilly hopes that sometime they’ll.
“They’ve all been so nice,” O’Reilly stated, “and so they’re a giant a part of why I nonetheless love enjoying hockey and being a part of this. We’ve such a superb group right here, and it’s so enjoyable coming to the rink and enjoying with these guys. It’s a good room like that. It simply makes it that a lot simpler for me to need to maintain going.
“I hope having the ability to do it and nonetheless loving it can provide them hope to play so long as they’ll. Hopefully at some point they’ll attain milestones like this later of their profession as a result of it does go by so rapidly.”
On the American Hockey League beat for twenty years, TheAHL.com options author Patrick Williams additionally at present covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a daily contributor on SiriusXM NHL Community Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his excellent protection of the league in 2016.
