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By Nick Lenahan
Let’s take a second and ask ourselves some tough questions.
Normally, I don’t like to write about the Sabres. To say I’m biased is an understatement. Call me a sucker for pain. Just like you reading this, I’m beyond frustrated with the organization. With that being said, the Jack Eichel saga is tragic. In 2015, we “settled” for the 2nd overall pick and received a 1st line center with elite talent. A player we thought could end the 4 year drought at the time and make us Stanley Cup contenders. It didn’t happen.
Buffalonians sat here like investors waiting for their stock to go to the moon, but instead settled for consistently lackluster returns. Not because of Jack Eichel, but a mismanaged front office with personnel changes more frequent than changes in the White House. While Kevyn Adams and Jack Eichel try and figure out who has the upper hand in this chess match of agony, allow me to build up the audacity to ask you these questions.
Why is moving Eichel upsetting?
Some may say because he’s an elite center with a rocket for a wrist shot. Others might say it’s his skating or because he’s the captain. I’m here to tell you those are all good answers, but not the real answer. The real answer is because our “consolation prize” in the McDavid Sweepstakes of 2015 has always been measured up against the most talented hockey player to ever lace them up. With that comparison, every goal, every dangle, every stride feels like a little win to us as Sabres fans who sit there justifying in their heads, or at the top of their lungs, that he is, and deserves to be, in elite company with the league’s best. Deep down we want to group him with a player that has over 100 points in 56 games this season.
Eichel has given Buffalo everything he can and I really believe that. It’s just two parties trying to fix something beyond broken.
How does Kevyn Adams replace Jack Eichel?
You don’t replace him. You can’t. First line centers of Eichel’s caliber aren’t just going to come knocking on the front doors of Key Bank Center to play for a team that went on an 18 game skid (amidst a playoff drought). The Sabres will lose this trade no questions asked. What it boils down to is figuring out what players we can actually rely on next season. After honestly answering that question, fill the positions, contract permitting, where you see the voids of uncertainty. Pretty simple right? The difficult part adding supplemental pieces that have proven they produce in your team’s style of play. More importantly, they have something to prove to themselves. We should the searching for players that are hungry and who feel like they haven’t scratched the surface yet. It’s simple, but easier said than done.
But I can’t handle another rebuild…
That’s fair. To say “This time it’s different,” would be redundant. It seems no matter what direction the Sabres go, or whatever pieces they add, the results remain the same. Stemming from that cycle, Buffalonians always advise to do basically the opposite of whatever the front office decides to do. Under head coach Don Granato, it almost seemed as if he was on the Sabres Twitter reading replies and adjusting accordingly and results improved.
With a “nothing to lose” mentality, the youngsters stepped up. Tage Thompson, Casey Mittlestadt, Dylan Cozens. Arttu Ruostalainen, even Rasmus Dahlin showed glimpses of the Swedish highlights that sold us in 2018.
We were spoiled 15 years ago. Good goaltending, competent coaching, and a farm system that constantly showed NHL production because the system they entered was already “bought into”. Judging from the way these young players responded and took advantage of their chances with an injury riddled roster, it’s not crazy to think we could be on the right path finally.
Sabres fans have been asking year after year, trade after trade, “Who can we get to compete and surround Eichel with?”. It’s not blasphemous to start asking, “How can we take Jack and turn his elite talent into depth in the right system.” It’s business.
It’s tough being in the position we are in. We don’t deserve the turmoil and anxiety inflicted over the past decade and oftentimes it feels cruel and unusual. So why not move Eichel? It’s embarrassing.
Absolutely.
But at the end of the day, do we torture a kid into his 7th season through multiple GMs and head coaches? 7 prime years of his talent were wasted. All he wants to do is win. Shouldn’t that be what we want too? We should be doing anything and everything to win, not suppress Eichel just to tell people “Yeah, but at least Jack is playing well.” We have 0 rings in 51 years. We have had a lot of players that spent their whole careers here and never won. If it comes down to a ring or Jack, I’ll take the ring. While it’s not guaranteed obviously that trading Jack will give us the pieces to build a good team for years to come, isn’t it worth entertaining the thought?
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