Reilly Aiming For Consistency In Second Season With Penguins

WILKES-BARRE, Pa - Player development is never a straight line from point A to point B. There are ups and downs during the season for players in the American Hockey League (AHL) similar to that of the teams themselves.

Take second year pro and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins' defenseman Will Reilly, for example.

As a rookie getting his feet wet in pro hockey during the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season, Reilly appeared in all but six of the Penguins' 32 games this past year - recording two goals and two assists in his first nine AHL games before finishing the season with six points (three goals, three assists) in 26 contests.

Fast forward to 2021-22 and the elimination of the NHL's taxi squads, combined with deeper rosters and tougher opponents on a nightly basis, and Reilly has found himself in and out of the lineup on the Penguins' blue line in what is his first full season of pro hockey in the AHL.

At one point, in late November, Reilly found himself in the coaches office being informed by Penguins head coach JD Forrest that he had been assigned to the Pens' ECHL affiliate Wheeling Nailers to get some ice time and build on his confidence at the pro level.

"Obviously, it was tough going down there. It was something I wasn't really expecting coming into the season," Reilly recalled of his ECHL stint, adding "I tried to just tell myself that I got to be where my feet are. I went down there and tried to have a positive attitude. I just worked as hard as I could every day to try and get back here."

After six points (two goals, four assists) in three games with Wheeling, Reilly's stint in the ECHL didn't last long at all as he was called back up once the mid-season injuries and callups began to affect the Penguins at both the NHL and AHL levels - creating another opportunity for Reilly to get into the AHL lineup.

"It's just consistency and being hard to play against - I think that's the biggest thing," Reilly said of what the coaching staff in Wilkes-Barre has been preaching. "I think recently, I've been being a lot more consistent. And I think that's what they're looking for. So hopefully, I can keep that going."

That consistency, coupled with an injury to Penguins captain Taylor Fedun, has allowed Reilly to be more of a regular in the lineup heading down the stretch. Entering Wednesday's matchup against the Philadelphia Flyers' AHL affiliate, Reilly has appeared in nine straight games and 13 of the team's last 15 outings.

"For him, a lot of it is consistency shift to shift, night to night," Forrest said of Reilly's progression this season. "This is really his first full season in this American [Hockey] League, which has a different look to it than last year's without the taxi squads and, you know, deeper lineups and just more guys to battle for spots. So, he's almost a rookie this year. And that consistency night in, night out is not something that everyone just has. He's been able to find that [consistency] lately."

It shouldn't come as a surprise that all four of Reilly's points on the season (one goal, three assists) have come in the last eight games, though that's not his bread and butter.

"He's also helped us on the penalty kill, which is another area we think that we need him to step up in, and he's been doing that lately," Forrest explained of Reilly's role in this current defensive core. "So if he continues in those areas, he's got a chance to be in every night."