Hershey Bears Convert Reilly Webb From PTO to Full AHL Contract

Nearly seven weeks after signing a professional tryout agreement, defenseman Reilly Webb has earned a full AHL contract with the Hershey Bears for the remainder of the 2025-26 season. VP of Hockey Operations Bryan Helmer announced the conversion Friday, March 13, closing the loop on a transaction that began when Hershey pulled Webb from its ECHL affiliate in South Carolina on January 22.

Webb, 26, arrived at the PTO stage of this deal having spent the first 37 games of his second pro season with the South Carolina Stingrays, recording four points on two goals and two assists. Those numbers were modest, but the bigger selling point was what he showed the year before: 68 games as a rookie, 12 points, and a plus-28 rating that ranked tied for sixth among all ECHL defensemen. For a 6-foot-4, 201-pound blue liner from Stoney Creek, Ontario, that kind of defensive impact tends to get noticed up the affiliate chain.

Webb's path to an AHL contract was anything but a straight line. Detroit drafted him in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft, but professional hockey would wait. He spent four years at Acadia University, where he was named assistant captain in 2023-24, and before that logged nearly 200 games in the OHL with the Saginaw Spirit and Hamilton Bulldogs between 2016 and 2020. He turned pro for the first time as a rookie with South Carolina, and the Stingrays retained him into a second season before Hershey came calling.

The January 22 announcement that launched Webb's PTO was packaged alongside a higher-profile move: the recall of forward Simon Pinard, who at the time was tied for fifth in ECHL scoring with 36 points in 36 games. Pinard's 24 assists led South Carolina and were also tied for fifth in the ECHL, and his five game-winning goals were tied for second in the league. The 24-year-old Drummondville, Quebec native had briefly been recalled once before, on November 29, 2025, before returning to South Carolina on loan two days later. That second call-up, alongside Webb's PTO, reflected Hershey adding depth at both ends of the roster as the season moved past its midpoint.

The South Carolina Stingrays function as the ECHL affiliate in a three-team structure that runs through Hershey to the NHL's Washington Capitals. Webb's contract conversion is a standard progression through that pipeline, one that the organization uses to secure players whose work on a tryout warrants a formal commitment before the season ends.

No AHL game log for Webb between January 22 and March 13 was included in the team's release, leaving his playing time in a Hershey sweater during that stretch to be confirmed separately. What is confirmed is that the Bears have locked him in through the end of 2025-26, giving the roster a known commodity at a position that demands size and defensive reliability in equal measure.