Why the post-Eichel Sabres are ready for the NHL’s main stage
Jack Eichel‘s latest return to Buffalo is about more than just Jack Eichel.
The Sabres‘ former captain is a headline. What’s happening in Buffalo this season goes beyond the surface.
When the league-leading Vegas Golden Knights drop in to duel on Thursday, it will be the second time Eichel has faced his old team since their messy divorce was finalized in November 2021. That trade of the club’s second overall pick in 2015 signaled the start of its next — and hopefully best — chapter, a slow-but-steady build back to being a contender.
Executing that vision has been Buffalo’s mission this season through a respectable 7-6-0 start. It’s what makes Thursday night important for the Sabres — not as a game against Eichel, but a game of genuine significance for them.
“I think we embrace it. Like, let’s embrace this game,” Buffalo captain Kyle Okposo said. “It’s a big game, and we haven’t been in big games in the last 10 years because we haven’t been in the playoffs. Let’s try and build something to where we can play in these games and have them mean something and rise to the occasion like the few times we did last year. Let’s continue that. I don’t think there’s any more pressure, but let’s rise to the challenge.”
Buffalo was in a different place when that first Eichel circus made landfall on March 10. The Sabres ranked in the bottom five of the standings at 19-32-8 while Vegas had a middle-of-the-pack 32-23-4 record. Still, the hometown team took care of business in a 3-1 victory which included Eichel being resoundingly booed by Sabres’ faithful — and that was just during his tribute video.
Whether it was the poor reception or lousy result, Eichel didn’t hold back in postgame comments fans are bound to remember come Thursday night.
“It was the loudest I’ve heard this place ever,” Eichel opined last spring. “Really. It only took seven years and me leaving for them to get into the game.”
And those boo birds?
“They must just [have been] booing because they wish I was still here.”
Eichel is long gone from Buffalo after a turbulent six-year relationship and a bitter split. The Sabres had high hopes when they selected him, envisioning a surefire superstar center to lead the franchise’s rejuvenation. That never happened. During Eichel’s tenure — including three seasons as captain — the Sabres failed to finish above .500, let alone make a postseason appearance.
The lack of on-ice results was frustrating enough. Both sides’ breaking point was more personal. It stemmed from Eichel’s neck injury in early 2021; he wanted to repair the disc issue with an artificial replacement surgery never performed before on an NHL player. Buffalo wouldn’t allow that, and Eichel wouldn’t budge, so Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams stripped Eichel of the captaincy in September 2021 and then traded him to the Golden Knights in exchange for a package that included Alex Tuch and Peyton Krebs.
Vegas immediately gave Eichel the green light to have his procedure. Following a long rehab, Eichel debuted with the Golden Knights in February. A month later, he was leaving Buffalo with zero points and a minus-one rating against his old club.
Eichel’s successful start to this season — six goals and 15 points in 14 games — tracks with how good the Golden Knights have been, producing their current eight-game win streak and rising to the top of the NHL standings at 11-2-0. His hot hand could add extra spice to the impending matchup.
Buffalo has been streaking in the opposite direction, dropping three in a row after going 7-3-0 out of the gate. It’s another reason why Thursday carries so much weight. The Sabres remember how Eichel was greeted last time; that passion plays into their hands. But it’s going head-to-head with the NHL’s best that could be the ultimate slump buster.
“Everybody knows what happened last year,” Okposo said. “We’re just going to play it by ear and try to feed off the crowd. We know that people are obviously excited for this game. And we’re excited to get to our game and show that we can compete and that we can play with some of the top teams in the league. Make no mistake about it, that’s what these guys are and they’re playing extremely well and they’re the No. 1 team in the league. So we’ve got a big test and hopefully use that energy from the crowd.”
DON GRANATO COULD feel the trap coming.
He didn’t like how the Sabres practiced on Monday after losing games on the road to Carolina and Tampa Bay. Buffalo had Arizona in town Tuesday before its matchups against Vegas and Boston. It would be easy, Granato knew, to overlook the Coyotes. And the Sabres did, losing 4-1 to create a season-long three-game spiral.
Which, conveniently, leads directly into facing the Pacific and Atlantic Division leaders back-to-back.
“I didn’t like it,” Granato said of the Arizona game’s place in the schedule. “Now, did me not liking it, did I carry any negative energy into that? That’s something for me to look at too. You can go back after that game and you can probably say, ‘I told you so,’ because it played out the way it played out. That is one that we wish we would have had a better performance in.”
Hard lessons are part of the learning process. So is creating — and then sticking to — an identity. Granato’s focus is downloading that into his players, so it becomes second nature regardless of whether their opponent is rising or reeling.
Vegas is unquestionably in the former category. Eichel has been a major contributor in making it so. Granato, much like Okposo, thinks those are positive things for the Sabres. It gives Buffalo a jolt to shake off some current stagnation.
“We don’t know what the environment will be [on Thursday], but it could be pretty energized,” Granato said. “That’s great. That’s exciting. It’s good for our guys. You have to acknowledge that you are two teams who made a big trade with really good hockey players going both ways. Anybody that plays against their old team always wants to do well. It breaks the monotony of an [82-game season]. But the outcome is going to be decided by who can get to their game and play it. I believe our guys are fully committed and focused to that. I think the other side of it is just added fun and flavor.”
The Eichel trade did allow for one true homecoming, and that was Tuch’s. The player from central New York grew up a Sabres fan. This season he’s tracking towards a potential career year already, with seven goals and 11 points in 13 games. Meanwhile, the 21-year-old Krebs is coming along slowly with two assists in 11 games. It’s all part of the process.
Granato didn’t know what to expect from either Tuch or Krebs when Eichel was traded. Looking back, he has no complaints about how that trade panned out, or what they’ve added since.
“I’m real happy with where they are,” Granato said. “I can’t recollect my expectations from when we first got them, but I feel that they’ve contributed a lot to our team and to the direction we’re going and they’re both players that are going to grow with our group that’s there.”
TAGE THOMPSON DOESN’T care who’s across the ice.
Eichel or no Eichel. There’s one job to do.
“I try not to focus on all that [hysteria],” he said. “Our thing is just to focus on the game, what we’ve got to do to win. Outside noise is just outside noise. It’s a good challenge, and I think we’re ready for it.”
Eric Comrie agrees. The Sabres’ netminder could feel it during Wednesday’s practice. Buffalo’s swagger was making an appearance. Comrie was pleased to welcome it back.
“You start to see the confidence building,” he said. “And the morale gets coming back a little bit, everyone starts getting more positive, and that’s when things start clicking again. It’s always that, at first, your attitude starts to dip and then all of a sudden, your play starts to dip and then all of a sudden, your attitude starts coming back and your play starts coming back. So I think it’s a big correlation between positivity and positive things happening on the ice.”
All Buffalo has to do now is translate that against Vegas. The Sabres have dealt with a few injures of late, including to Rasmus Dahlin (who missed the Tampa Bay game with an upper-body ailment), Mattias Samuelsson (lower-body) and Henri Jokiharju (facial fracture). This recent stretch has given Buffalo its first taste of adversity this season. It won’t be the last.
But the Sabres haven’t forgotten their identity and don’t plan to either, regardless of which former friends are now waiting in the wings.
“I think we’ve got a really good team,” Thompson said. “I think everyone here believes that too. So I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone in this room that we were going to come out hot. We’re going through a little bit of a slump right now, but we’ve got a good opportunity [against Vegas] to get back in the win column, so we’ve just got to turn the page and move forward.”
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Inspirational thought of the week:
“Honestly, when we lose, I don’t even get in the shower until early this morning. I’ll just be mad. I just brush my teeth. It’s like, I don’t deserve soap.”
— Syracuse head coach Fran Brown
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located behind the “sorry, not sorry” bouquet of water hemlocks sent to the Big 12 officiating office from Utah athletic director Mark Harlan, we know all too well the sting of losing football games. We see it every week in every game we watch.
Yeah, yeah, we know what you’re thinking. “Come on, dummy, someone loses every game that anyone watches.” That’s true. At least now it is. We are also old enough to remember when games ended in ties. That was way worse.
But here in the Bottom 10 Cinematic Universe, losses are worse because that’s all you experience. You’d think we’d get used to it, numb from the pain like when you keep accidentally biting that same spot on your tongue to the point that it just becomes sensory free. But instead, it’s like Bruce Banner explained about being the Hulk: “You see, I don’t get a suit of armor. I’m exposed. Like a nerve. It’s a nightmare.”
However, as we learned in “Age of Ultron,” even after one of his worst losses, Bruce Banner does take a shower. So, Coach Brown, take it from us, in a world where every team has a helluva lot more losses than Syracuse … dude, wash up. Seriously. We can smell you from here. And we’re in Kent, Ohio.
With apologies to Mr. Clean, former Miami (Ohio) quarterback Mike Bath, former Southern Illinois running back Wash Henry and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 11 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Golden(plated) Flashes are still America’s last winless FBS team, losing their 18th straight game when they were edged by Ohio 41-0. Now they travel to My Hammy of Ohio, where they are given a 2.8% chance to win by the ESPN Analytics Ouija board, er, I mean Matchup Predictor. But honestly, that game will only be the appetizer ahead of the, yes, Week 13 main course that is the Wagon Wheel showdown with Akronmonious. And by appetizer we mean way-past-the-expiration-date freezer-burned mini-pizza bagels.
The New Owls not only used their talons to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at UTEP, losing in double overtime, they earned Bottom 10 Bonus Points for firing their head coach — and during their first year as an FBS team, no less. Though the AD issued a statement that Brian Bohannon had “stepped down,” Bohannon himself responded on social media: “Contrary to what’s been reported, I want to be clear that I did not step down.” But there is no confusion as to whether the Owls have stepped up or down in these rankings, where every move up is also a move down.
Brett Favre Funding U. lost to We Are Marshall 37-3, meaning all eight of their defeats this season have been by double digits. In related news, I also received double digit political texts on Election Day — and one of those was from Favre. No, for real. I wonder, did he cover the data charges himself or did he steal change from the donation jar at his grocery store checkout?
Sometimes in this life we are asked to do things that go against the fiber of our being. Like taking your daughter to the concert of an artist you’ve never heard of. Or me having to use Earth’s most annoying instrument, the leaf blower. This weekend this team of Minutemen will be asked to try to defeat Liberty.
5. The Sunshine State
The Coveted Fifth Spot has never been more crowded. The FBS, FCS and NFL teams of Florida posted a 1-11 record over the weekend, salvaged only by the Miami Dolphins’ win over the Los Angeles Rams on “Monday Night Football.” UC(not S)F, US(not C)F, FA(not I)U, Stetson, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman all lost, led in misery by the Wildcats’ five-overtime loss to Southern. The Flori-duh Gate Doors celebrated the announced retaining of coach Billy Napier by losing to Texas in a squeaker 49-17. And My Hammy of Florida finally spotted an opponent a lead too large for a Cam Ward comeback and took its first loss of the season, falling to unranked Georgia Tech. If only someone else in the state could relate to that …
The Semi-No’s are continuing to work around the Coveted Fifth Spot by earning their Bottom 10 keep the old-fashioned way, not only losing to semi/sorta/kinda ACC member Notre Dame by a scant 52-3, but also earning a pile of their own Bottom 10 Bonus Points not by firing head coach Mike Norvell, but because Norvell fired both his offensive and defensive coordinators and a wide receivers coach. In related news, over the weekend a friend of mine steered his bass boat into a giant pile of sharp rocks and reacted by throwing his shirt and hat overboard.
It was three weekends ago that the Buttermakers lost to then-second-ranked Oregon 35-0. On Saturday, they lost to then-second-ranked Ohio State 45-0. Now they play sixth-ranked Penn State, and in two weeks end their season playing currently eighth-ranked Indiana. We have to assume that a team of professors from Purdue’s legendary mechanical engineering department is studying this experience as a way to assess the stress put on a school bus that is attempting to drive over a lava field covered in landmines.
The Minors have a weekend off to continue their post-Kennesaw victory party. And what’s the best way to snap yourself out of a two-week hangover? Hair of the dog? A cold bucket of water over the head? How about the hair of a coontick hound and a bucket of water from the river during a Week 13 trip to Neyland Stadium to play Tennessee?
Whatever is left of UTEP after Knoxville will then play whatever is left of the Other Aggies after their Week 12 trip to face the OG Aggies of Texas A&M. If there’s any justice in this world, then the loser and/or winner of that Aggie Bowl would go on to play …
The Other Other Aggies lost to the one-loss team the nation forgot about, Warshington State. But if you consider the week before that, we find a Bottom 10 conundrum. Utah State beat WhyOMGing? but the week before that lost to Whew Mexico by five points. Meanwhile, Wyoming, who lost to Utah State two weeks ago, spent last weekend beating New Mexico by five points. Perhaps we will be given some clarity when Wyoming ends the year at Washington State. Or perhaps we will have already given up. As so many here in the Bottom 10 seem to do.
Waiting list: Miss Sus Hippie State, Georgia State Not Southern, FA(not I)U, Akronmonious, Meh-dle Tennessee, WhyOMGing?, Temple of Doom, Living on Tulsa Time, You A Bee?, Standfird, people who put all those election signs up but now won’t take them down.
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