Is the Golden Knights' problem Jack Eichel?

[WhataKnight]

What Sabres fan doesn’t place a lot of blame on the Murray or Botts front offices?

There are a few on previous pages. I only mean to reference how the ratio of posts I read still have a lot of “blame Eichel for BUF” rather than the other way around.

Fewer seem into criticizing Kruger (sp?), Botterill or Murray - or hell, even naming them - than the “Eichel Cocky! Eichel Bad!” sort of posts one sees online, though admittedly that’s largely online. This is probably the most I’ve seen their names brought up by someone other than myself when this topic comes up and it’s refreshing.

Still, there are holdouts.

 

[StrompTroller]

The only disagreements I have with the above would reflect on how anyone who was over-promised to, placed on a pedestal by management, pressured like crazy to move heaven and earth for a franchise, told that they had to get an undesirable surgery and stripped of their captaincy when they held their ground would probably act the same or worse.

As I said previously, Eichel isn’t blameless…..but he was under the age of 25 for virtually all of it. Where’s the demand for better from FO, training staff, etc. if not for the “Jack has an attitude problem” narrative that helps keeps the Pegulas’ hands clean?

Sabres’ FO ineptitude WAAAAAAAY outstrips Jack’s attitude here. There are too many pivotal points here that the front office botched - Lottery, Draft, Surgery - that predate Eichel even putting on a Draft Day jersey. Still, he’s easier to blame than the owners, and that’ll be 96% of what matters to large swathes of Western NY.

It's all perspective my friend.

Many players would love the idea of being a team's savior ala Josh Allen as aformentioned.

Jack was paid very well for whatever and any service asked of him on the ice.

Jack's attitude as I have stated showed both during his tenure and after in Buffalo, I'm not sure why draggin the Pegula ownership threw the mud has any bearing on his actions as an adult man.

His surgery dilemma is the most blatantly ill advised topic on this board. Two facts remains constant; it had never been performed on an NHL player before to have any data behind it to back up its success rate and secondly his contract is covered by insurance and team doctors who would not give the okay on such an unprecedented surgery. Buffalo's hands were tied.

 

[StrompTroller]

Respect to that. I should note that as a Knights fan that grew up in the region and moved west ages ago, some voices are just louder. LOL

Just want to recognize the diff between rational Sabres fans and those that…..how did I put it…..”help a narrative on Eichel’s attitude become a boogeyman of epic proportions” to the continued glee of Tim Pegula.

Someday I may have a more negative opinion of Eichel, but currently in Vegas, we see him play defense (!!!) we see the team around him gel solidly with him, and it makes the harsher statements of attitude problems from a number of Sabres fans sound more like “cherry-picked grousings of a jilted ex” than honest observations of character quality - kinda like how one on a train from NY to TOR with no knowledge of hockey could for a split second believe that there are two people named John Tavares in the NHL.

The worst thing I’ve seen Jack Eichel do is use his desired surgery to force the team’s hand, and if he was tired of how that operation was going at the time, I don’t think that’s the most egregious thing after the carousel of everything thrown his way since the second Edmonton won the McSweepstakes.

As for high-octane attitude problems, J.T. Miller put up 90+ points last year, and I’d much rather have Eichel’s output and attitude over THAT.

No offense because you seem like a well informed hockey fan and I don't mean to come across as rude but you realize the bolded also implies to your opinion right? You clearly have your own narrative and opinion which is pro jack and anti pegula....

 

[BuffaloSabresSword]

This ^^^ is what I was talking about when I referenced “Pegula apologists”……just think, if Murray/Pegula hadn’t collectively shat the bed, none would need to cling so desperately to a narrative that proclaimed 0.64 PPG > 0.94 PPG.

Hell; you could have had Eichel AND Thompson if ownership hadn’t let Murray and Botterill poison the rebuild attempt…..or go full caveman about the surgery, even…but to say that Eichel didn’t develop into a star player? That’s just the sort of butthurt that makes anyone with stock in Preparation-H hard as a rock.

I never wanted both eichel and thompson. No place for Eichel on the sabres top 6.

Thompson
Cozens

Both are way better and less cap. Sabres would be Worse with Eichel. 3 line C on sabres for 10 mil I would been happy with just cap dumping him and we got 4 pieces .

So happy sabres wonn that trade . We got Tuch plays first line , Krebs doing great job on the 4 th line and Will only be better. Östlund and the 2 rounder. It was good in the end this happend or we would have Eichel stuck on the roster not being able to trade him at all .

He has 18, 25, 32 points his last 3 /seasons , never scored 40 goals Tage has 31 goals in 37 games . Tuch 43 points in 37 games. 10 mil less cap also . We Will be a playoff team latest next season. We should be this season if looking at how good they start playing .

 

[BuffaloSabresSword]

Tuch has more points per game in larger sample of games then Eichel this season Also at 4 mil something that Eichel has with 10 mil

 

[ItWasJustified]

Buffalo's hands were tied.

No. They could've easily fired the team doctors any time they wanted. Sabres organization made a deliberate choice. Seems it worked out fine for both Eichel and Sabres.

 

[StrompTroller]

No. They could've easily fired the team doctors any time they wanted. Sabres organization made a deliberate choice. Seems it worked out fine for both Eichel and Sabres.

lol what?!

Jesus if the GM Eichel posts weren't enough to bear now he gets the medical staff fired too lol?! Holy.

 

[ItWasJustified]

lol what?!

Jesus if the GM Eichel posts weren't enough to bear now he gets the medical staff fired too lol?! Holy.

The medical staff were obviously wrong, so with hindsight it wouldn't been wrong at all to fire them.

 

[tsujimoto74]

The medical staff were obviously wrong, so with hindsight it wouldn't been wrong at all to fire them.

This is one of the stupidest take I've read on this scenario, and boy there have been a lot of stupid takes about it. The Sabres contracted fantastic physicians. The doctor who said no to the disk replacement surgery was a doctor who helped develop it as an alternative to fusion. Eichel had to seek multiple "second" opinions to find a single doctor who would recommend the surgery that he wanted. The Sabres did absolutely nothing wrong for trusting the professional opinion of their doctors. And, btw, their doctors weren't the only ones. There was at least one other GM who was reported to have been interested in making an offer for Eichel at first, but then had to drop out because his team's doctors wouldn't sign off on the disk replacement surgery either. I hope Eichel's surgery does work out of him in the long run (though I think he's an ass, that doesn't deserve living with a broken neck), but there's a reason he had to hunt so hard for a doctor and team willing to take that chance with him.

 

[Voight]

No. They could've easily fired the team doctors any time they wanted. Sabres organization made a deliberate choice. Seems it worked out fine for both Eichel and Sabres.

So your solution would've been for Pegula to orchestrate hockey's version of the Saturday night massacre?

As for the OP.... Eichel always came off like a petulant child IMO.

 

[WhataKnight]

It's all perspective my friend.

Many players would love the idea of being a team's savior ala Josh Allen as aformentioned.

Jack was paid very well for whatever and any service asked of him on the ice.

Jack's attitude as I have stated showed both during his tenure and after in Buffalo, I'm not sure why draggin the Pegula ownership threw the mud has any bearing on his actions as an adult man.

His surgery dilemma is the most blatantly ill advised topic on this board. Two facts remains constant; it had never been performed on an NHL player before to have any data behind it to back up its success rate and secondly his contract is covered by insurance and team doctors who would not give the okay on such an unprecedented surgery. Buffalo's hands were tied..

Basically, the guy played his ass off and got frustrated when his efforts alone couldn’t move the needle. Starts thinking of new pastures, decides he’s not the guy for fixing the franchise, requests a trade. The he gets injured - combine the lack of success after several seasons and the rapid succession of coaches/GM’s, and that frustration is easy for justify for anyone not in line to rationalize management’s dysfunction at the time - which also predates the 2015 draft.

As I said pages ago, blaming a guy in his 20’s for taking 4-6 years to get frustrated enough to act out on it is one thing. Nothing changes the fact that the timeline of sourness for this fiasco begins with the person the FO hired to manage the team at the lottery, so yes - the front office and management is due blame for mismanaging both pick and player. The minute Tim Murray groused about losing the lottery on camera is when that relationship started on the wrong foot.

It’s harder to blame someone between 18-24 for getting frustrated with rudderless management than a front office that should have been staffed with competent hockey minds and for a time was not - at least if one isn’t doing all they can to suggest management was blameless. I’m not saying Eichel isn’t due an amount of blame, but Pegula hired Murray, Botterill and Adams as coaches and had 4 different coaches in the 6 years he was there. If he was over the lack of progress, the franchise didn’t really do much to reverse it.

I’m not going to blame the player who was practically a kid when drafted - and not far removed from it when things went south - more than an unstable FO when one could almost make a soccer team of GMs and coaches over that period.

So I’ll keep dragging Pegula & that FO - as they were at that time - through whatever I want, thanks. Reaching so hard to demonize a guy in his early 20’s getting frustrated after he showed up as he could in order to absolve the FO that hires multiple hockey minds that shit the bed across more than 5 years is neither rational or a good look.

Long and short, two quick looks at Wikipedia to count coaches and GMs from that era is all I need to see that the team was run too chaotically to build from then. Putting up a PPG and getting told “it’s not enough” from management would piss off anyone not in full simp-out mode.

 

[WhereAreTheCookies]

The medical staff were obviously wrong, so with hindsight it wouldn't been wrong at all to fire them.

The Doctor who was against the surgery also happened to be the the Buffalo Bills Orthopedist specializing in the spine. He was one of the doctors who pioneered the surgery Jack wanted and also performed the surgery that allowed former Buffalo Bill Kevin Everett to walk again. Why would they fire that guy to appease a player? They trusted his medical opinion. Regardless of right or wrong he felt there was more risk.

 

[MarkusKetterer]

The only disagreements I have with the above would reflect on how anyone who was over-promised to, placed on a pedestal by management, pressured like crazy to move heaven and earth for a franchise, told that they had to get an undesirable surgery and stripped of their captaincy when they held their ground would probably act the same or worse.

As I said previously, Eichel isn’t blameless…..but he was under the age of 25 for virtually all of it. Where’s the demand for better from FO, training staff, etc. if not for the “Jack has an attitude problem” narrative that helps keeps the Pegulas’ hands clean?

Sabres’ FO ineptitude WAAAAAAAY outstrips Jack’s attitude here. There are too many pivotal points here that the front office botched - Lottery, Draft, Surgery - that predate Eichel even putting on a Draft Day jersey. Still, he’s easier to blame than the owners, and that’ll be 96% of what matters to large swathes of Western NY.

Eichel was stripped of his captaincy because he was never playing for the Sabres again. Sure, his refusal to kowtow to the organization played a part in that, but he should have been stripped of it before that when he asked for a trade out of Buffalo in the summer of 2020.

 

[WhataKnight]

Eichel was stripped of his captaincy because he was never playing for the Sabres again. Sure, his refusal to kowtow to the organization played a part in that, but he should have been stripped of it before that when he asked for a trade out of Buffalo in the summer of 2020.

Totally understandable there - and agreed. One thing I like about the config the Knights have when healthy now is that it puts Eichel on a team where maybe as many as eight different players had leadership roles to positive effect - none of them him.

I hope this trade works out solidly for both teams all the way through. That said, a number of posts regarding Eichel seem to made with the mindset that a guy too young to even rent a vehicle in his own name is somehow responsible for a number of personnel, managerial and PR decisions which experienced hockey executives present at the time should have been making themselves. Murray’s mistake came first; perhaps the second was keeping both the #2OV pick and Murray as GM through the draft. Trading down and possibly scooping up Kyle Connor + another first (think Chabot) would have looked better regardless of who the GM was after that…..kinda like how passing on Luke Schenn and Colin Wilson got the Islanders a reliable player who hasn’t worn another crest since, only Connor’s the better scorer and spreading out the return from a pick that high could have improved multiple roster spots.

 

[WhataKnight]

No offense because you seem like a well informed hockey fan and I don't mean to come across as rude but you realize the bolded also implies to your opinion right? You clearly have your own narrative and opinion which is pro jack and anti pegula....

None taken!

However, I’m less about my own narrative, or even a pro-VGK narrative so much as it would seem. I’m going by the “tale of the tape” regarding things within a player’s reach, and things within a front office’s reach.

If the Sabres were coached and managed properly at the time, there wouldn’t have been seven major personnel changes - signaling ownership being unsettled on a number of things. On the other side of the coin, Eichel was brought in to play hockey, be active in the community and lead - which he did through amounts of front office tumult, until finally giving up on being “the guy” and asking for a trade, getting ticked off that it wasn’t happening, and finally leveraging a trade when differences of opinion on surgeries came about.

I don’t consider myself anti-Pegula in any way other than noting that the magnitude of things in Jack’s reach within the duration of his play there only was nowhere near that of the front office - and anyone doing the hiring for it. If a guy just turning 18 goes roughly PPG across five seasons through 7 different coaches and GM’s, the player is producing while instability rules behind the bench. If it seemed like I was swinging too hard at just the Pegulas themselves, it was unintentional shorthand since digging up reasons why the other coaches and GMs came and went all chronologically come after Murray’s Lottery kerfuffle.

 

[Voight]

I think we found Jack Eichel's burner account.

 

[ItWasJustified]

This is one of the stupidest take I've read on this scenario, and boy there have been a lot of stupid takes about it. The Sabres contracted fantastic physicians. The doctor who said no to the disk replacement surgery was a doctor who helped develop it as an alternative to fusion. Eichel had to seek multiple "second" opinions to find a single doctor who would recommend the surgery that he wanted. The Sabres did absolutely nothing wrong for trusting the professional opinion of their doctors. And, btw, their doctors weren't the only ones. There was at least one other GM who was reported to have been interested in making an offer for Eichel at first, but then had to drop out because his team's doctors wouldn't sign off on the disk replacement surgery either. I hope Eichel's surgery does work out of him in the long run (though I think he's an ass, that doesn't deserve living with a broken neck), but there's a reason he had to hunt so hard for a doctor and team willing to take that chance with him.

The Doctor who was against the surgery also happened to be the the Buffalo Bills Orthopedist specializing in the spine. He was one of the doctors who pioneered the surgery Jack wanted and also performed the surgery that allowed former Buffalo Bill Kevin Everett to walk again. Why would they fire that guy to appease a player? They trusted his medical opinion. Regardless of right or wrong he felt there was more risk.

So you two are saying the medical team was of the correct opinion, even though Eichel is a living example of the complete opposite? The operation was either going to be a failure (what Sabres medical staff thought) or it was going to be a success (what actually happened), so it's extremely black and white. The grey areas doesn't exist in this matter.

 

[WhereAreTheCookies]

So you two are saying the medical team was of the correct opinion, even though Eichel is a living example of the complete opposite? The operation was either going to be a failure (what Sabres medical staff thought) or it was going to be a success (what actually happened), so it's extremely black and white. The grey areas doesn't exist in this matter.

Your statement previously that the team should have fired their doctors for recommending the proven surgery over the surgery that had not yet been performed on a hockey player is completely off base. There are plenty of things to criticize ownership for, but trusting their medical staff is not one of them.

Kris Letang had the exact surgery their doctor was recommending, and he has been fine for several years now. Right now Jack seems to be fine as well, but there are not years of data to see if it remains that way like there are with fusion. Yet you are already declaring that they were wrong? Again, completely off base.

The grey areas do exist in this matter, they just don't exist in your mind. When there is more than 1 option those grey areas will always exist. As far as one surgery being correct or not that has yet to be seen. Fusion has a proven track record, ADR does not.

 

[Zach716]

I’m getting strong vibes that Bobby Eichel made an account a day ago and his only posts are novels defending Jack in here lol

 

[tsujimoto74]

So you two are saying the medical team was of the correct opinion, even though Eichel is a living example of the complete opposite? The operation was either going to be a failure (what Sabres medical staff thought) or it was going to be a success (what actually happened), so it's extremely black and white. The grey areas doesn't exist in this matter.

The success of Eichel's surgery won't be known for years. The question was never whether disk replacement surgery works (we know it does); it was whether it would withstand the repeated trauma it will inevitably be subjected to playing in the NHL. The fusion surgery has a well-worn track record of being successful in athletes. For a recent example, see Kris Letang. The surgery Eichel got has essentially never been performed on an athlete in a contact sport before and certainly not on a hockey player. The guys who went to ~9 years of school to learn about this stuff didn't like the risks. So yeah, I'm gonna stick with my take and say the Sabres were fine following the advice of their doctors. And, again, they weren't the only team whose medical staff came to that conclusion.

Like I said, I hope it does work out for Eichel, but your criticism of the Sabres for not cutting ties with all of their doctors because they couldn't recommend what Eichel wanted is way off-base.

 

[WhataKnight]

I’m getting strong vibes that Bobby Eichel made an account a day ago and his only posts are novels defending Jack in here lol

If I were Jack or Bob Eichel, I’d have other stuff to do…lol

Fact remains the same. Front offices have far more reach than any one player save the “McCrosBedards” of the world.

They were hockey execs with control……had the shot to replace the GM that screwed up on air, they had the shot to trade down, they had the shot to make the trade pre-injury after the fact, and the whole duration was the shot to stabilize the front office. They figured out staffing later, but did none of these in time to not tank diplomacy.

On the other side, Eichel was active in the community and put up nearly a PPG through enough coaches and GMs to almost passably dress up as Slipknot for Halloween. If he was frustrated and wanted out, the FO’s instability across five seasons factors in, and makes character assassinations on the player pretty shoddy when the people running the team at the time simply were not running it right.

Also, since the Sabres themselves did fire Oliver Finlay (found it!!!!) within a year of being hired in 2015. Almost an admission of fault with medical staff stability preceding Eichel coming on. They were at zero equilibrium from the GM down to trainers - Fact.

 

[Statto]

So you two are saying the medical team was of the correct opinion, even though Eichel is a living example of the complete opposite? The operation was either going to be a failure (what Sabres medical staff thought) or it was going to be a success (what actually happened), so it's extremely black and white. The grey areas doesn't exist in this matter.

The surgery was deemed riskier, which it probably, was but that doesn’t guarantee failure. The Buffalo medical teams view could be 100% correct but the surgery still be successful, it simply being the Sabres didn’t like the odds. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

Also, IIRC, one of the concerns was the risk of the impact of big hits. That’s something that’ll play out over time and hopefully it proves to be a non issue for Eichel.

 

[WhataKnight]

Like I said, I hope it does work out for Eichel, but your criticism of the Sabres for not cutting ties with all of their doctors because they couldn't recommend what Eichel wanted is way off-base.

I agree with not changing the doctors over because of one player wanting a specific procedure. It just shouldn’t have been the sword things fell on.

I hear that he made a trade request prior to the surgery. They could have done what competent FOs do and not sat on their hands for the better part of two seasons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[tsujimoto74]

I agree with not changing the doctors over because of one player wanting a specific procedure. It just shouldn’t have been the sword things fell on.

I hear that he made a trade request prior to the surgery. They could have done what competent FOs do and not sat on their hands for the better part of two seasons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes, competent teams love trading young #1 centers with term/control. Happens all the time.

 

[WhataKnight]

Yes, competent teams love trading young #1 centers with term/control. Happens all the time.

And incompetent teams hold onto the pick until Murphy’s Law intervenes.

I get it man; I get the Taro Tsujimoto reference and I can respect that you’ll defend your team.

The fact remains that the Sabres front office had a plethora of other options they could have taken and picked from the worst ones on a streak back then. If they were making good decisions, they wouldn’t have been in the position to tank in the first place. I’m glad that they’re trending upward, but I’m not going to act like a player is more to blame than the FO if the player isn’t generational.

The Pegulas & Co. screwed up. They were execs. Eichel isn’t blameless, but one player doesn’t swing the weight of a FO. That’s just sane logic. You defend your squad and I get it, but the number of changes in that management is enough example of the FO self-indicting for me to not need to go full semantic over it.

Quod erat demonstrandum. ‘Sall good.