klos1963

I thought about this often during the end of last season. I hope we still get the chance.

Buffalo Sabres GM Kevyn Adams said disgruntled star Jack Eichel has not yet requested a trade after Eichel's contentious news conference Monday in which he openly questioned whether he'd play in Buffalo next season.May 12, 2021

Every player should be thinking about himself, doesn't mean you can't still be a team player. Why should he say he owes anything to the fans? They'll stab him in the back first chance they get, like now. He's been an excellent player his entire time in Buffalo, he played while hurt this season. It's just now that people are looking for reasons to be against him. He's having a medical disagreement with the team, it's a serious issue and he needs to look out for his best interests, it needs to be about him regarding his injury.

If you did a survey of all players asking where they would play if they could choose , in order, how many wouldn't rank Buffalo at the bottom or the bottom, say 3?

Watch

You don't need to build the entire team through free agency, but if you think we are going to draft our way to beat out Tampa, Toronto.... in our division, not to mention the rest of the conference, you're wrong. Also, you acquire good players via trade, and unless you're trading for someone with a long term deal in place don't expect to re-sign them. If we trade our 2 top players and scramble for a goalie, we will likely battle for the top pick again, players won't want to come or stay here. And we'll have a lot of cap space if we move Eichel and Reinhart, what good will that do us?

And without a goalie. We don't have one. On top of putting together a solid roster, we still have to worry about the rest of the league, most of the teams in our division are very well run, they aren't going anywhere and they are in better position to acquire top players than we are or likely will be. Trading Eichel will be a franchise killing mistake.

That sounds horrible for us. Conditional picks could be ones that aren't favorable to us, mid range NHLers- dime a dozen, don't need to trade your franchise player for them and a cap dump sounds lousy. I doubt this happens, but I don't expect anything to exciting for us. This will be a bad trade with horrible repercussions .

You ungruntle him. Nobody would play for this team if they didn't have to. He has 5 years left on his deal. We do have some leverage.

If we trade for futures, who is in the next group of current players that gets fed up with rebuilding and wants out in 2 or 3 years. And we still don't have a goalie.

I just think if we weren't going to trade him, the team would make it obvious. KA - " We expect to have a healthy Jack Eichel in our lineup come opening day"

There's no way a trade does anything but make the next few seasons awful. And I think Granato is a good choice for HC. Poor guy.

although I wish this wasn't the case, I think this is what it is.

or they're still years away from UFA and have no choice but to be there. Kinda the same thing , I guess.

What if he doesn't like Buffalo? That seems to be high the list of desirables for a Sabre player. How do you not feel it's necessary to interview any draft pick let alone first overall? I mean what team wants to draft someone real high, give him a huge contract then want to get rid of him halfway through the contract and start rebuilding again?

Nobody wants to be here. You make the case to them why they should want to. We all seem to know we won't get equal value for Eichel, but somehow this trade is something many want. I just don't get it. We still haven't replaced ROR now we need 2 centers.

Yep, I would think if he wasn't getting traded , we would be told that.

The next Rick Martin, he was touted.

Dick Duff - 85

Paul Cyr Kevin O'Shea Real Lemeuix

But as I said, probably not quality free agents. Ones that can't get a contract with a team that they want to go to. We'll have likely just traded our top 2 players, lost our only goalie to FA, all 2 years after trading ROR for nothing much. Buffalo is the Siberia of the hockey world right now. If is looks like we got a weak return for Eichel, that will hurt even more.

I'd be shocked if he was able to sign quality free agents.

Will Montreal be allowed more fans at the games? It makes for such a great atmosphere.

This seems to get lost on a lot of people. We don't have an NHL quality goalie on our roster...anywhere.

I didn't realize you were speaking of one specific goalie, thought you were talking in general. My mistake.