The Eichel 2022-23 Thread: "I'm not bitter -- I'm just interested."

[Thorny]

1 hour ago, Hank said:

Makes sense, you are his biggest fan. I guess it wasn't a coincidence you disappeared for months after his return game in Buffalo. He just came off so bad in that post game interview. 

He was my favourite player - that is correct. 

- I’m glad, and a tad humbled, to learn that you so noticed my absence 

Edited October 20, 2022 by Thorny

[Digger]

4 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Eichel was very entertaining to watch when he was healthy in Buffalo.

Still not convinced the direction needed to be completely reversed, but the die was cast & there's no going back.  The team is now at least as entertaining as the Eichel O'Reilly version on its best days but without any of the angst.  Go Sabres.

Really curious how things would've turned out had the Kane Bogosian trade never been made.  Without their 2 best buds to teach them how to be pros, maybe Jack & Reinhart buy in.

Yes I agree undoing the Evander Kane trade and I'll throw in the Lehner trade would have been interesting.  The total tear downs to get Eichel and then get past Eichel have been very frustrating to live through as a fan.  But at this point it's pretty satisfying to look forward to the current team growth, character, talent and expected success.

[LGR4GM]

3 hours ago, Thorny said:

Eichel hasn’t played a full season in 3 years. It makes total sense they’d be looking to ease him into the season ice time wise. When they hope to have him for the full grind plus playoffs. Not a perfect game but he’s been playing well overall - hope to see it continue 

- - - 

On a separate note, I’m glad to see the thread being so diligent on keeping us updated on the aspects of Jack’s game he needs to improve upon - *of course* I know that none of it is personal, that’s it’s purely for the purpose of breaking down some things we don’t want to see with our guys, or really from any team/players looking to find success. 

I honestly like the idea so much,  I’m going to get on board with it actually. As everyone already knows, there’s really very little value in any conversation that’s significantly unbalanced, so I’ll be taking on the role of providing some POSITIVE clips or Jack Eichel to this year (yearly?) long discussion, so we can contrast with some of the good traits we’d like to see our players take on.

Should be a fun thread!

Got it, you're triggered because you liked Eichel and a large portion of the fanbase dislikes him. 

He's living rent free in both sides heads as this stage. Although the play perfectly encapsulates the players main issue, heart.

2 hours ago, Thorny said:

Like I said, should be a fun thread!

- - - 

Thought you might enjoy this:

https://sinbin.vegas/stone-shares-laugh-with-eichel-over-tight-jeans/

This week at Lifeguard Arena, captain Mark Stone was asked by Sportsnet which teammate was the most fashion-forward on VGK’s roster. In years past, Karlsson, Ryan Reaves, and Alex Tuch were anointed as the freshest in the Golden Knights locker room, but that honor has now been passed down.

Hmm, good question. Got to give it to Eichs. –Mark Stone to Sportsnet

Fun quote: “It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that Jack Eichel has the swankiest suits on the team. After all, the number one center has a high profile around the league and the extra scratch he carries around in his wallet.”

Liked this bit best, though:

“Beyond the compliments from Stone, you can catch a glimpse of two teammates’ building a connection. For only having played together for a handful of games, the Golden Knights’ two biggest weapons appear to have formed a nice bond.”

Glad to see him fitting in well. 

You could always start that thread

[LGR4GM]

Just ftr, I don't have any problem with Thorny defending Eichel. Just don't be fake passive aggressive about it.

[Thorny]

5 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Got it, you're triggered because you liked Eichel and a large portion of the fanbase dislikes him. 

He's living rent free in both sides heads as this stage. Although the play perfectly encapsulates the players main issue, heart.

You could always start that thread

The irony of you using the word “triggered” is that it’s used as a thinly veiled and simplistic attempt to trigger. The fact I liked Eichel and found the most extreme (outlier) of the reaction to him to be vile, is a documented fact and barely bears worth mentioning.

- - - 

The passages/clips/statements about Jack of the type being posted in the (correct) thread, this one, are totally fair game for content, why wouldn’t they be? Regardless of my disagreement. 

But my posts to the contrary, within the discussion that was already established about Eichel by others, not me, is equally fair game. 

2 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Just ftr, I don't have any problem with Thorny defending Eichel. Just don't be fake passive aggressive about it.

That was so obviously supposed to be a declaration of my looming and supremely dreaded defence of the man and taken as such, nothing passively aggressive about it at all lol 

[triumph_communes]

1 hour ago, Taro T said:

Eichel was very entertaining to watch when he was healthy in Buffalo.

Still not convinced the direction needed to be completely reversed, but the die was cast & there's no going back.  The team is now at least as entertaining as the Eichel O'Reilly version on its best days but without any of the angst.  Go Sabres.

Really curious how things would've turned out had the Kane Bogosian trade never been made.  Without their 2 best buds to teach them how to be pros, maybe Jack & Reinhart buy in.

I believe in this. Too bad we’ll never know. 

[LGR4GM]

6 hours ago, Thorny said:

The irony of you using the word “triggered” is that it’s used as a thinly veiled and simplistic attempt to trigger. The fact I liked Eichel and found the most extreme (outlier) of the reaction to him to be vile, is a documented fact and barely bears worth mentioning.

- - - 

The passages/clips/statements about Jack of the type being posted in the (correct) thread, this one, are totally fair game for content, why wouldn’t they be? Regardless of my disagreement. 

But my posts to the contrary, within the discussion that was already established about Eichel by others, not me, is equally fair game. 

That was so obviously supposed to be a declaration of my looming and supremely dreaded defence of the man and taken as such, nothing passively aggressive about it at all lol 

Well, I tried but you're not interested. 

[mjd1001]

On 10/19/2022 at 11:30 AM, SwampD said:

It’s true Eichel is not McDavid. Nobody is.

The problem with that statement for Eichel is, there are too many steps between Eichel and Mcdavid.

Many wanted to (and some still do) beleive there was McDavid then a step down to Eichel. The reality is there is McDavid, then Matthews, Draisatil, Ovi, Kaprizov, Kreider, Gaudreau, Huberdeau, Stamkos, Tkachuk, Panarin, McKinnon, Crosby, Barkov, Connor, a few others, and THEN Eichel.

Eichel is taking up over 12% of his teams cap space on a team that is stretched in that a regard. His team gave up 3+ first rounders for him (Tuch, Krebs, and last years 1st). He is tied for 111th in the league in points per game since you have been with Vegas. Since he started his career, he is 25th in the league in points per game, and 47th overall in points (partly because he has had so many games missed to injury).  My point is you simply cannot have the lack of effort you displayed on that play the other day, or he has displayed many other times over his career and even since he has been with vegas (many of those plays shown here and/or on Twitter).

If you are getting paid that much, and your team gave up so many assets for you, you have to be better in the D-zone, regardless of how long your shift was (if his shift was something absurd like 1.5 minutes, then he needed to get off the ice and let someone else on)

Edited October 20, 2022 by mjd1001

[Doohickie]

14 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

If you are getting paid that much, and your team gave up so many assets for you, you have to be better in the D-zone

Peterka plays better defense than Eichel.

[SwampD]

19 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

The problem with that statement for Eichel is, there are too many steps between Eichel and Mcdavid.

Many wanted to (and some still do) beleive there was McDavid then a step down to Eichel. The reality is there is McDavid, then Matthews, Draisatil, Ovi, Kaprizov, Kreider, Gaudreau, Huberdeau, Stamkos, Tkachuk, Panarin, McKinnon, Crosby, Barkov, Connor, a few others, and THEN Eichel.

Eichel is taking up over 12% of his teams cap space on a team that is stretched in that a regard. His team gave up 3+ first rounders for you (Tuch, Krebs, and last years 1st). You are tied for 111th in the league in points per game since you have been with Vegas. Since you started your career, you are 25th in the league in points per game, and 47th overall in points (partly because you have had so many games missed to injury).  My point is you simply cannot have the lack of effort you displayed on that play the other day, or he has displayed many other times over his career and even since he has been with vegas (many of those plays shown here and/or on Twitter).

If you are getting paid that much, and your team gave up so many assets for you, you have to be better in the D-zone, regardless of how long your shift was (if his shift was something absurd like 1.5 minutes, then he needed to get off the ice and let someone else on)

k

[mjd1001]

13 minutes ago, SwampD said:

k

Great. Glad you agree and took the time out to post that you do.

[RochesterExpat]

37 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

The problem with that statement for Eichel is, there are too many steps between Eichel and Mcdavid.

Many wanted to (and some still do) beleive there was McDavid then a step down to Eichel. The reality is there is McDavid, then Matthews, Draisatil, Ovi, Kaprizov, Kreider, Gaudreau, Huberdeau, Stamkos, Tkachuk, Panarin, McKinnon, Crosby, Barkov, Connor, a few others, and THEN Eichel.

I weirdly had this exact conversation with my dad yesterday. That draft hyped McDavid and Eichel as both generational talents and able to carry rosters single-handedly with McDavid being the generational of generational talents. McDavid is in a whole other tier from anyone else in the league and that was readily apparent in the third period of the last game. I agree that Eichel is quite a few steps removed from McDavid. I think the issue is that so many teams tanked for McDavid that front offices and scouts were overhyping the "consolation prize" so this idea continues to persist. There was literally no one questioning the first and second picks in that draft. Everyone had it as McDavid and then Eichel.

Think of it this way: if you redrafted 2015 over again, who would you take first and second? The answer is absolutely McDavid at #1 and no one is going to argue otherwise. For the 2nd OA, I don't think you're picking Jack.

1st - McDavid

2nd - Kaprizov

3rd - Marner

4th - Rantanen

5th - Aho

6th - Eichel (or Barzal, Chabot, Connor, Werenski, Hintz, Hanifin...)

I'd probably pick Jack 6th, but I'm pretty sure you could just as easily argue Eichel over Aho and select him at 5th. You could also make the reasonable argument that he's not going in the top 10 of the draft anymore.

The point is that in his own draft class, he's steps removed from McDavid.

Eichel is still a supremely talented hockey player. He makes mistakes. Every player does. He takes shifts off. Hate to say it, but most players do (one of the reasons I was bummed we traded Curtis Lazar to Boston with Taylor Hall was because he never took shifts off even when the whole team was taking the night off).

I have an autographed Jack Eichel Sabres jersey from his rookie year (no C, just saying) and an autographed game puck. I certainly didn't dislike Jack while he was here and I won't pretend that I ever did. I felt bad for him regarding the surgery, although I recognize fully the team was completely within their rights. I'll admit toward the end of his tenure here I was very lukewarm (at best) to him and I was happy for both the organization (because I thought the return was better than what was leaving) and for Jack Eichel (so he could get his surgery and play for a team that he would want to play for) when he was traded. I wasn't bitter about that like some.

I did not appreciate his comments about Buffalo after he left and I'll readily admit it's fun to see anyone eating crow on occasion, but I don't really hate Jack and I don't understand those who do. I usually don't comment on things Eichel-specific because the VGK fanbase on Reddit is arguably second only to the Leafs in how annoying they are, and Buffalo fans with anything regarding Eichel aren't really any better. The loudest voices are the ones that get heard, etc.

Edited October 20, 2022 by RochesterExpat

[Radar]

49 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

The problem with that statement for Eichel is, there are too many steps between Eichel and Mcdavid.

Many wanted to (and some still do) beleive there was McDavid then a step down to Eichel. The reality is there is McDavid, then Matthews, Draisatil, Ovi, Kaprizov, Kreider, Gaudreau, Huberdeau, Stamkos, Tkachuk, Panarin, McKinnon, Crosby, Barkov, Connor, a few others, and THEN Eichel.

Eichel is taking up over 12% of his teams cap space on a team that is stretched in that a regard. His team gave up 3+ first rounders for him (Tuch, Krebs, and last years 1st). He is tied for 111th in the league in points per game since you have been with Vegas. Since he started his career, he is 25th in the league in points per game, and 47th overall in points (partly because he has had so many games missed to injury).  My point is you simply cannot have the lack of effort you displayed on that play the other day, or he has displayed many other times over his career and even since he has been with vegas (many of those plays shown here and/or on Twitter).

If you are getting paid that much, and your team gave up so many assets for you, you have to be better in the D-zone, regardless of how long your shift was (if his shift was something absurd like 1.5 minutes, then he needed to get off the ice and let someone else on)

Was it scouting or media build up or maybe both that appear to have had Jack way above what it appears he is. For sure not "generational" and not to be mentioned in the same conversation with McDavid. I think Jack is a very good player but as you mentioned if the draft were held again knowing what we know now he'd be considerably lower in the draft order. This isn't rare in drafts but the super hype for Jack seems to be quite far off at least at this point in time.

[Digger]

Wow, lots of comments about Eichel.  I wonder if there's anything else going on in the NHL of interest (if only there was a thread for that).

[mjd1001]

1 minute ago, Digger said:

Wow, lots of comments about Eichel.  I wonder if there's anything else going on in the NHL of interest (if only there was a thread for that).

Because he was such a big part of this franchise, and especially at the end of his time here such a polarizing figure, there will be a lot of talk about him for a while.  Personally, I like talking and posting about his success, or failure, because seeing what he is/turns into has a lot to do with how well the Sabres did in that trade.  Does it matter for the team going forward? Nope, not really, but this is a message board and we are fans and the reason many of us are here is we like talking about things that are emotial triggers.   Once a game starts and I watch the Sabres, I have zero thoughts about Eichel, but between games, I like to follow the entire NHL, especially players that used to be part of the team.

[Digger]

5 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

Because he was such a big part of this franchise, and especially at the end of his time here such a polarizing figure, there will be a lot of talk about him for a while.  Personally, I like talking and posting about his success, or failure, because seeing what he is/turns into has a lot to do with how well the Sabres did in that trade.  Does it matter for the team going forward? Nope, not really, but this is a message board and we are fans and the reason many of us are here is we like talking about things that are emotial triggers.   Once a game starts and I watch the Sabres, I have zero thoughts about Eichel, but between games, I like to follow the entire NHL, especially players that used to be part of the team.

Personally I have moved on for the most part.  I do hope that we beat Vegas with him in the lineup again this season but other than that I'm okay.  We had lots of discussion and debate on Eichel all last year.  I would continue to read the posts if someone started an Eichel thread.  My original post was really that based on the number of posts about Eichel (there should be a new thread) rather than filling up the Around the NHL thread.  It's not my call just my opinion.

[SwampD]

40 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

Great. Glad you agree and took the time out to post that you do.

It’s been my point all along, I don’t care about Eichel and find it kinda funny how much others do.

[nfreeman]

On 10/19/2022 at 10:40 AM, mjd1001 said:

I'm wondering if he is still hurt, or has another injury that no one knows about yet.

Vegas is 4 games into the season. A small sample size yet but we can notice a few trends:

-Eichel is not getting the ice time you would think your franchise (or at least star) player should be getting.  Star forwards are getting 21m-24m minutes of total ice time per game.  Eichel so far is at 15:36...5 to 6 minutes less than most other star forwards.  That is a huge difference.

-Even strength might be even more telling.  Most star forwards are around 17 minutes of even strenght ice time, some (Gaudreau, McDavid, Quinn Hughes) are in the 19-20 minute range.  Even strength though, Eichel is getting about 12 minutes (12m 15s). That puts him 6th among forwards on his own team.

This year so far he is down almost 4 minutes of total ice time compared to his time with Vegas last year, and down nearly 3 full minutes of even strength ice time compared to last year with Vegas (where he was coming off surgery AND had a different injury later in the year)

Does the new coaching staff not buy into his effort? Is he injured again? Or is his overall game not even close to that of an elite player that deserves top ice time, but are there a legit 5-6 forward on that team that have an overall game better than him?

Interesting.

Certainly the injury/re-injury risk played a major role in the apparent paucity of good offers received by the Sabres, as well as the Sabres' unwillingness to sign off on the type of surgery that Eichel wanted.  If in fact Eichel is diminished and physically unable to play 20+ min per game, it would vindicate the Sabres' position, as well as the reluctance of other teams to throw their crown jewels at the Sabres in trade offers.

 

17 hours ago, Hank said:

Makes sense, you are his biggest fan. I guess it wasn't a coincidence you disappeared for months after his return game in Buffalo. He just came off so bad in that post game interview. 

This type of hostility adds nothing to the conversation.

[nfreeman]

Starting a thread to keep the Around the NHL thread clean.

[MattPie]

👑

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by MattPie

[LGR4GM]

1 hour ago, nfreeman said:

Starting a thread to keep the Around the NHL thread clean.

What!!??!?!?!? 

WHATTTTT???
 

People can start threads their own threads?!?!?!?

 

 

17 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

You could always start that thread

Where's Thorny, someone should tell him about starting threads. It will blow his mind!

[Pimlach]

On 10/19/2022 at 12:53 PM, SDS said:

1B

Eiche'ls Draft class best forwards - McDavid, Marner, Rantanen, Aho, Conner, Barzal  ...

 

Eichel was supposed to be 1B, but he might be 1G?  

[matter2003]

18 hours ago, Taro T said:

Eichel was very entertaining to watch when he was healthy in Buffalo.

Still not convinced the direction needed to be completely reversed, but the die was cast & there's no going back.  The team is now at least as entertaining as the Eichel O'Reilly version on its best days but without any of the angst.  Go Sabres.

Really curious how things would've turned out had the Kane Bogosian trade never been made.  Without their 2 best buds to teach them how to be pros, maybe Jack & Reinhart buy in.

The only thing Eichel ever bought into was himself. He is a player who cares more about his stats than he does about the team winning. When things are going great, he is fine...but when things aren't, he isn't the type of player who is going to pull your team out of it...in fact, he is the type of player who is going to make it worse with his sulking and crap attitude.

He is the type of player that you might add to an already great roster but is never going to take a team anywhere as the leader. He just doesn't have the makeup for that. 

When you have to fix a team that is underperforming the most important thing you need to do is to remove the people who are making it impossible to get the bus going in the right direction via their attitude, their effect on other players on the team, etc.  Obviously the Sabres determined that Eichel, Reinhart and Risto were the people that had to get off the bus.

So far they appear to be correct in that judgement.

Edited October 20, 2022 by matter2003

[Weave]

Remember when we said Eichel would be Messier to McDavid’s Gretzky?

Remember when we said he hated to lose so bad that he’d prove to be the better player and win more cups?

Hated. To. Lose.

Fun times.

[PASabreFan]

Yall are late to the party. As per usual.