Memorial Cup Notebook: Sam O’Reilly’s repeat chase, Carter Bear’s recovery, Landon DuPont’s future
KELOWNA, BC – Cameron Reid can’t help but laugh when he thinks about playing against Sam O’Reilly.
“Maybe the most excited I’ve been about going from having to play against someone to having them as a teammate,” Reid said. “He punishes you when you play against him, he makes you make mistakes, it’s pretty cool being on the other side.”
And the “other side” this weekend could mean a Memorial Cup championship for the Kitchener Rangers on Sunday.
This will be O’Reilly’s third Memorial Cup Final. He was part of the London Knights team that lost to the host Saginaw Spirit in 2024, then had five points in five games last spring as London hoisted the trophy.
With London taking a step back this season – by London standards – O’Reilly was sent to Kitchener in a blockbuster OHL move that included 10 draft picks going back to the Knights. He went on to be named the OHL’s Most Outstanding Player and Playoffs MVP as he won his third straight OHL Championship.
“It’s a move for a player that, really, that guy is never available usually, especially from London,” Rangers GM Mike McKenzie said. “It takes two to dance on a big deal like that, but you don’t expect that type of deal to really happen.”
When McKenzie looks back on the deal with the Knights, he says it’s a philosophy he’d like to define how he looks at the Rangers, willing to make big moves that help the team push for championships.
For those within the Kitchener room, O’Reilly’s presence has been more of an unspoken example. According to teammates, like Reid, O’Reilly raises his voice when needed, but it’s the forward’s calm demeanour in the most chaotic moments that others really lean on.
“He doesn’t panic, he doesn’t worry about things on the ice,” Reid said. “I think when you have a guy leading like that with his play, it’s easy to not feel overwhelmed by anything.”
From an NHL side, O’Reilly’s continued junior success has the Tampa Bay Lightning drooling at his potential. The Lightning, rather famously now, weren’t able to sign Hobey Baker Award winner Isaac Howard last summer and moved Howard’s rights to the Edmonton Oilers for O’Reilly.
It’s been an ideal “consolation prize”, if you could call it that, for the Lightning and general manager Julien BriseBois, who has been on-site this week in Kelowna.
Carter Bear soaking it all in
A year ago, Carter Bear was in the midst of a difficult recovery from an Achilles injury, the result of a freak skate accident in March that ended his draft-eligible season.
It turned Bear into one of the more intriguing prospects, storyline-wise, for the 2025 draft as teams tried to assess his draft stock after an injury that can have lingering effects, especially if players try to push back too soon. Tyler Seguin, for example, has been open that his Achilles injury in 2016 cost him some of his top speed and full athleticism for more than a year after his initial recovery.
It’s why Bear, and the Detroit Red Wings, who drafted him 13th overall, took a patient approach. Bear didn’t take part in prospect showcase games back in September for the Red Wings, and was a limited participant at training camp, more of an observer than a player, before taking a cautious approach as he returned to the WHL.
It was a learning process, Bear said, and one that really forced him to trust his own body a bit more when it came to recovery. For Bear, who’s rather soft-spoken, it also goes against everything he represents on the ice as a tenacious force in all three zones, one that the Elite Prospects Draft Guide last spring labelled as “having that bear in him.”
“You kind of appreciate things, and you look back at things like that,” Bear said. “I think that’s the first time I ever dealt with something like that, and you want to push, but you have to also trust in yourself.”
Landon DuPont’s future
Bear’s teammate in Everett, Landon DuPont, is one of the most-watched players at this Memorial Cup.
The 17-year-old exceptional status defenceman is a presumptive No. 1 pick for the 2027 NHL Draft, but missed the final round robin game with an undisclosed injury against Kelowna and is questionable for the semifinal this evening against the Chicoutimi Saguenéens.
Whether DuPont plays tonight or not, and Everett coach Steve Hamilton has indicated the defender will do anything possible to help his team, the off-ice vibe around him is a stark reminder of the new world order of junior hockey.
NCAA coaches and recruiters are in the building, watching closely. Some are better than others at hiding their team logos on team-issued jackets, and DuPont is the top prize, similar to how Gavin McKenna chose Penn State after playing in the 2025 Memorial Cup with the Medicine Hat Tigers.
It creates an interesting dynamic from a CHL perspective, and one that was highlighted even more when McKenna was a guest on the TSN panel on Thursday during the intermission in Kelowna. The NCAA is here and isn’t going away, even with some new wrinkles in the recent 5-in-5 NCAA legislature. How do you handle the messaging?
Some teams have been more open about it, publicly pushing college commitments, while others have been a bit more secretive in how they promote players.
Speaking to agents this week at the Memorial Cup, including a handful that have clients playing in the tournament and preparing for NCAA hockey, there’s become a new understanding. As one agent put it, there might be some anger from CHL teams, but in the long run, in their view, the CHL teams have seen the benefit of embracing change early.
“It’s going to swing back and forth a bit; the new NCAA proposal for this 5-in-5 thing is going to change it too,” the agent said. “Some teams we’ve worked with, I think the ones that are going to be the best in the long run, are the ones that realize you kind of have to go with the flow with this.”
CHL President Dan MacKenzie said something similar this week when he joined me on the Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey podcast.
“There are going to be trends, and there are going to be things that happen that benefit us. There are [also] going to be things that benefit, maybe some other leagues,” MacKenzie said. “I think at the end of the day, the rule changes are all moving towards players having choices. We have said from day one we're supportive of that.”