Jack Eichel's Bitter Stalemate with the Sabres Ends as Golden Knights Go All-In
It's nothing personal. It's just business.
The Buffalo Sabres have been trying to peddle that narrative all summer with regard to star center Jack Eichel. The player who was supposed to get them over the rebuilding hump languished on bad Buffalo teams for six seasons, with the final being shortened not just by the COVID-19 pandemic but also a herniated disk in his neck.
The Sabres wanted him to have a surgery standard for NHL players, a disk fusion. Eichel and his representatives sought other opinions and decided on a different course, an artificial disk replacement surgery.
The NHL's collective bargaining agreement gives the team the authority to make the decision for the player, yet Buffalo allowed the situation devolved into an ugly spectacle, which is why it's difficult to believe that this stalemate was not, in fact, personal.
If it wasn't personal, then why are the Vegas Golden Knights, who acquired him Thursday, allowing him to have artificial disk replacement surgery? Why did the Sabres strip him of his captaincy? Why did this drag into the start of the 2021-22 season?
Buffalo might have been understandably hesitant about allowing the most important player in the lineup to have a procedure that has never been performed on an active NHL player before, but the two sides were never going to come to any sort of agreement.
The Golden Knights pushed in all their chips to acquire the center, sending injured forward Alex Tuch (shoulder), 2019 first-round draft pick Peyton Krebs and conditional draft picks in 2022 and 2023 to the Sabres for the game-breaking center and a 2023 third-round pick.
"Why wouldn't his people want what's best for him?" Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon said in a video press conference following the trade announcement. "None of us in this room have the level of expertise that would be required for an opinion. I defer to the people that he's entrusted himself and his health to, to make that decision and will obviously have a hand in next steps, rehabilitation, return to play, you know, those types of things.
"But the decision of the surgery is one that we respectfully defer to Jack and his representatives."
McCrimmon acknowledged this is a new procedure for the NHL, but it's not a new surgery for athletes in contact sports. Dr. Chad Prusmack on Elliotte Friedman's 31 Thoughts podcast said Eichel could be in line to play within six to 12 weeks after having surgery.
It's a procedure that mixed martial arts fighters and rugby players have had. McCrimmon, in making a business decision to send a key member of the 2018 Stanley Cup Final team and a top prospect to Buffalo, took a more personal approach to Eichel.
Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams, in his own video conference, had some empty platitudes about caring for Eichel as a person, but that stands in stark contrast to how the organization has handled Eichel's health over the past six months.
The winner in this is Eichel himself. Not because he's going to a winning team—although that is a check in the victory column as well—but because he gets to have his preferred procedure and get rid of the pain he has endured since early March when the injury occurred in a game against the New York Rangers.
"Vegas baby, Vegas," he tweeted to his 28,000 followers after the deal.
This ends a very bitter, very public dispute between a player who once signified hope for a beleaguered Buffalo franchise and the organization that drafted him with the second pick in 2015. The Sabres will continue their rebuild and do so with a top-six winger in Tuch and a burgeoning playmaking center in Krebs, Eichel's replacement up the middle.
The Sabres weren't willing to budge on what they wanted in return, and Adams said retaining some of Eichel's $10 million salary was a non-starter given the length of the pact (Eichel is under contract through 2025-26). He didn't see cap space as something he could weaponize. Adams wanted picks, prospects and an established NHL player.
"What I can tell you is, we got to a point where this was the offer that we felt was the strongest that we had up to this date, and we felt very good about it," Adams said. "We worked extremely hard for months and months. And we were not going to compromise on what we felt we needed as a return. This was a really important decision for us. So however long it was going to take, it was going to take."
Now the attention turns to Vegas, a team with Stanley Cup aspirations in a tenuous spot. Putting Eichel on a line between Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty might give the Golden Knights one of the best lines in the NHL. No offense to the Perfection Line in Boston, but David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron would have some competition if this line comes together.
However, Stone and Pacioretty are also on long-term injured reserve with lower-body injuries. The timeline for Eichel is somewhat unknown. McCrimmon said he is still unsure of when Eichel might be ready to play again, with an optimistic estimate of three to four months and a conservative estimate of four to five.
McCrimmon said Eichel has been training on the ice with no contact, so post-surgery he could be cleared to get back on the ice in six to eight weeks with no contact and able to skate with contact around week 12.
"It's really challenging to give you a time frame because it's never been done in this sport," McCrimmon said. "I'm told that Jack has been able to be quite active in terms of training while he's injured, even being on the ice. It's contact that he would not be cleared to endure.
"I keep thinking four to five months, three to four months. We don't know. We really don't know, and I'm not trying to suggest that we do know, but that might be the best guess I can give you right now."
The Golden Knights have to get to the playoffs without their top players. So far, that looks like it will be a struggle. They're 4-5-0 to open the season and second-to-last in the Pacific Division.
While Vegas is confident Eichel will return to full form, McCrimmon acknowledged this put the team in a tough position against the cap and that some of these injured players might not be what they once were.
"It's an ongoing dance that capologists around the National Hockey League have to be adept at," he said. "As we speak, we've got in excess of $30 million that's either on long-term injury or eligible to be on long-term injury. That takes any immediate pressure off of our salary cap.
"You do have to ask yourself what happens if we return to full health, and yet sometimes you never return to full health."
If the Golden Knights do not, in fact, return to full health, then the fall could be hard. They have traded all four of the players they've selected in the first round. They have made big-money acquisitions, such as signing Alex Pietrangelo. And while this gives them one of the best teams in the NHL on paper, the farm system that was built from the ground up has been decimated.
McCrimmon put Eichel in the same category as Pietrangelo, a player Vegas signed for his Stanley Cup-caliber leadership. Eichel has never participated in a playoff game but is regarded as one of the league's elite centers. So if this works, it will be worth it.
"We weren't in the market elsewhere for centers. This was interest that was solely determined by the quality of the player that was available," McCrimmon said. "I believe if you look at Stanley Cup champions, an elite center is certainly a big, big part of that."
As with all things Las Vegas, it isn't personal—it's a gamble.
