Jack Eichel's Stanley Cup no reason for Sabres to feel shame

Right off the faceoff here, let’s push back on a lazy national media narrative seen in several places last week: Jack Eichel’s Stanley Cup is not remotely like Ryan O’Reilly’s.

That’s because the Buffalo Sabres of 2023 are a long way from the Blue and Gold of 2019, who endured the embarrassment of O’Reilly winning a Cup and Conn Smythe Trophy with the St. Louis Blues a scant 11 months after he was traded out of Buffalo.

"If Power prefers a bridge contract before a long-term agreement, the Sabres could offer something like the three-year, $18 million deal Dahlin signed in 2021," writes Lance Lysowski.

O’Reilly may have lost his love of the game but not for Buffalo. The organization made that decision for him. Meanwhile, the relationship with Eichel had reached the point of no return on both sides. What is one of Kevyn Adams’ highest talking points? He wants players who want to be here. Eichel didn’t want to be here anymore.

The organization took a hard line on his medical situation – well within its rights but easily debatable – and it was unclear how he would be physically whenever his neck was finally repaired. And can you really keep a captain who’s at war with the front office and ownership? Of course you can’t.

From those two trades, the Sabres have Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, Jordan Greenway and Noah Ostlund. That’s not bad at all.

The Blues and Golden Knights have a Cup, which is obviously better for now. Let’s see how time continues to mold the feelings.

As horrible as the O’Reilly trade looked four years ago this month, it feels a wee bit better now that Thompson is a 47-goal scorer and a first-line center putting up more goals and points than Eichel ever did here. And ask any Sabres fan you find: Heading into next season, would you rather have Eichel or Tuch? You know the answer.

Forever tied by their UConn connection, and some similarities to their strengths on the ice, Wood and Thompson could soon be competitors or teammates.

This is the best we’ve felt about the Sabres, the most hope anyone has had for them, since their Northeast Division championship season of 2010. In the 2011 playoff season, remember, they were going nowhere until the 16-4-4 run that got them into the playoffs once Terry Pegula’s purchase of the team was finalized. And that’s been it ever since.

There is more talent up and down the lineup than at any point since 2007. The most prospects knocking on the door here or ready to roll in Rochester since 2005. More belief in the coach and GM than any point since the Lindy-Darcy days.

Eichel’s title shouldn’t derail any of those feelings. Props to him for playing that well in his first career trip to the playoffs and getting over the top. Still, as solid as Eichel was in the final, the redemption narrative and national TV love was a little much for a guy who didn’t have a goal in the series (We’re talking about you, Wayne Gretzky).

We saw a similarly strong version of Eichel in Buffalo in the 2019-20 season, as his game matured and he started taking defense seriously in Ralph Krueger’s first season as coach. Eichel had 36 goals and 78 points in 68 games before the pandemic ended things for Buffalo, and finished eighth in the Hart Trophy balloting.

As for the media sob stories about Eichel’s surgery saga that resurfaced during the final, it’s easy to overlook why it took Adams so long to trade his captain. Yes, Adams was trying to squeeze out the best return he could – but it was difficult to find any team willing to allow Eichel to have his preferred surgery. The fact remains that most teams in the NHL agreed with the Sabres’ stance and not Eichel’s.

Adams was able to find a match with Vegas, both in assets and willingness to allow Eichel his choice. Good for all parties involved. Eichel looks fine physically but there were heart-in-throat moments in the final when you saw Eichel crushed by Matthew Tkachuk and when Eichel took a puck to the back of his neck.

Still, let’s not get carried away with Eichel as a sympathetic figure here. We know how the relationship with Buffalo fans is essentially toast now and, suffice to say, the folks in many departments inside KeyBank Center have long moved on from him as well. It was a partnership soured on all fronts.

Eichel got too much too soon in Buffalo because it was the only card Pegula and then-GMs Tim Murray and Jason Botterill could play. He got the big-money contract and the captaincy before he had done a whole lot to deserve it. We’ll never know the course of franchise history if the Sabres had made O’Reilly the captain instead of Eichel, like they probably should have. Eichel could have grown into his career and played without that burden, like he can now in Vegas.

“One of the things our scouts really admired about Jack is his competitiveness,” Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon said prior to the opening faceoff of the final. “That’s really been on display in the playoffs. Jack didn’t have that opportunity in Buffalo along the way. Jack was a young captain in Buffalo. Jack gets to be here in a room of really good leaders.”

"The Sabres have done a good job of changing the team from one that is wondering what it is all about to one that, I think, is on the cusp of being really, really good," Meehan said.

Look at that roster. Mark Stone, Alex Pietrangelo, Alec Martinez, the Year One “Misfits” led by Jonathan Marchessault. The Golden Knights aren’t anybody’s team and that’s why they work so well.

In that ‘19-20 season, Eichel averaged 22:06 a night for the Sabres because he had to play that much. He was at just 18:46 for Vegas this year and had 66 points in 67 games. In the playoffs, it was 19:00 and 26 points in 22 games. That’s about what he’s going to be on this team because of its depth. That’s all he has to be.

There’s never been a legitimate Conn Smythe candidate who didn’t score a single goal in the last 12 games of the playoffs, but that was Eichel’s resume this year and he finished second to Marchessault in the balloting.

Eichel got his Cup in 2023 and was great while doing it. Maybe he’ll get more. Let’s see what the Sabres get in 2024 and beyond.

1. At the start of the 2021-22 season, when he was still waiting to be traded by the Sabres, what would the odds have been on Eichel winning a Stanley Cup before Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews?

2. Did you know: Eichel is the first player to win a Cup with an AAV of $10 million and up on his contract. Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon, Chicago’s Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews and the Los Angeles duo of Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar won their titles before their deals crossed the $10 million threshold. Meanwhile, marquee recent winners Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Steven Stamkos, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin all still play for less than $10 million.

3. Eichel in the Cup final: 0-8-8/+4, 12 shots on goal. Sam Reinhart in the final: 1-1-2/-1, 9 shots on goal. Reinhart had no points in the first four games and his goal was with his team down 7-1 in the finale. Didn’t even feel like he was on the ice most of the series.

Reinhart was at 7-4-11 through the first 16 games of the postseason but was no factor in the final, even though he played more than 21 minutes in every game.

With the Cup awarded, the NHL was able to finalize the order for all picks in the draft June 28-29 in Nashville. Florida thus selects 31st in any round it has a pick and Vegas goes 32nd. The Sabres currently have picks in each round as follows: No. 13 (Round 1), Nos. 39 and 45 (2), No. 86 (3), No. 109 (4), No. 141 (5), No. 173 (6) and No. 205 (7).

Vegas has pick No. 77 from the Sabres in the middle of the third round, the last vestige of the Eichel trade. The second-round pick the Sabres received in the deal was sent to Minnesota in the Greenway trade and is No. 64.

Ahead of another busy summer, News Sabres writers Mike Harrington and Lance Lysowski answer several notable questions in our latest Sabres roundtable.

Starting in 2016, here are the Cup-winning goalies: Matt Murray, Murray again, Brayden Holtby, Jordan Binnington, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Vasilevskiy again, Darcy Kuemper and now Vegas’ Adin Hill. One star and five guys. Before you go all Connor Hellebuyck on me, it sure seems like you don’t need to overpay for one to win. Build a better defense to cut down on scoring chances.

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman started to spread the word during the final that we’ll be singing “Viva Las Vegas” during next year’s draft. The announcement should come soon that T-Mobile Arena will take this year’s mantle from Nashville and host the 2024 meeting and NHL Awards Show.

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Two second-round series went five games, the conference finals were one sweep and one near-sweep, and the Cup final was toast in five games. The Vegas-Florida series was the biggest snoozer we’ve had in the final since the Anaheim-Ottawa five-gamer in 2007.

Hershey finally found its offense as the AHL’s Calder Cup finals were even through four games. Coachella Valley won the first two at home by a combined score of 9-0 before Hershey rebounded to take Games 3-4 to even the series heading into Game 5 in ChocolateTown. Those victories ended a huge offensive slump.

Remember, Hershey beat Rochester, 1-0, in Game 6 of the East final after suffering a 4-1 loss to the Amerks in Game 5. That meant that over 12 periods of play spanning the two series, the Bears had scored just two goals.