Jack Eichel being traded from Sabres to Golden Knights in NHL blockbuster
When the Jack Eichel sweepstakes finally ended on Thursday morning, the embattled star heading to Vegas, the Rangers had been long out of it.
Once the Rangers signed center Mika Zibanejad to an eight-year, $68 million contract extension in October, that ship had sailed. Even before that, it didn’t help that Sabres owner Terry Pegula didn’t want to send Eichel to New York without an outsize return, per The Post’s Larry Brooks.
So, Vegas it is. In the end, it was Eichel and a 2023 third-round pick for Peyton Krebs, Alex Tuch, a top-10 protected 2022 first-round pick and a 2023 second-round pick. Carolina and Calgary were also in the mix at the end, per TSN’s Pierre LeBrun.
How this trade will be judged depends on what happens with the herniated disk in Eichel’s neck — the problem that created such a long standoff in the first place. Eichel’s doctor has said that artificial disk replacement surgery would be better both to get him on the ice sooner, and later in life. The Sabres preferred an anterior cervical discectomy with fusion. Eichel’s preferred option had never been done on an NHL player.
Assuming Eichel gets the disk replacement, he could be back on the ice in as soon as six weeks and practicing in eight weeks. If that’s the case, and if Eichel doesn’t suffer lasting issues from the injury, the Golden Knights are getting a game-changing player.
Eichel could center Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty, instantly putting him with more talented players than he ever got a chance to play with in Buffalo, on a team whose goal is to win the Stanley Cup. Eichel had 78 points (36 goals, 42 assists) in 2019-20, when he played 68 games before the Sabres’ season was cut short. That was alongside Jeff Skinner and Sam Reinhart.
Stone and Pacioretty have both been hurt, with Pacioretty suffering a more serious lower-body fracture and his status week-to-week. The slow-starting Knights, 4-5-0 through their first nine games, will now wait on those two, Eichel and William Karlsson, who is out six weeks with a broken foot, before regaining full health.
As for Buffalo’s return, it is predictably focused around youth. The 25-year old Tuch is the older of the two players going to the Sabres, and is expected to miss until January after undergoing shoulder surgery in the offseason. For the tanking Sabres, that won’t be a huge problem, so long as Tuch is himself upon return.
Krebs, a first-round pick in 2019, has a chance to be a top-six forward and gives the Sabres a third young center, after Dylan Cozens and Casey Mittelstadt. It’s unlikely that the Vegas first-round pick falls in the top 10, so that asset will convert into something sooner rather than later.
Certainly, none of what the Sabres got measures up to Eichel in terms of talent. But given their lack of leverage, with Eichel very publicly demanding a trade and unable to get surgery until dealt, this could have been worse for Buffalo.
