Jack Eichel has big plans for the resurgent Sabres
By ALEX PREWITT - December 27, 2018
Setting down his turkey burger, Jack Eichel gazes through the windows of a downtown Buffalo restaurant and once again imagines the future. He sees a surrounding riverside area choked with game-day traffic, blue-and-white Sabres jerseys shuffling toward KeyBank Center beneath an early-summer sky. He pictures live music blaring and cameras panning overhead, broadcasting crowd shots to a national audience. He hears chants—LET'S! GO! BUFF-A-LO!—and smells beer. After all, Eichel notes, "Buffalonians don't mind the tailgate."
He visualizes because that is how he has always pursued goals. Growing up in North Chelmsford, Mass., Eichel would tack articles about local athletes receiving college scholarships to the walls of his family's basement, extra motivation while cranking out deadlifts before middle school. Even when the 2015 draft was years away, the background image of his iPod Touch was a picture mosaic of highly regarded prospects, including the only one who would actually get picked ahead of him, Edmonton's Connor McDavid. He also programmed the device to deliver a daily reminder along with his morning alarm: HOW BAD DO YOU WANT TO MAKE THE NHL?
Now that Eichel is there—not to mention captaining the insurgent Sabres at age 22, burnishing his Hart Trophy credentials with 48 points in 37 games, averaging 20:16 per night of all-situation hockey, and generally realizing his potential as the savior for one of pro sports' most woebegone cities—he is singularly focused on an even loftier goal. "Constantly thinking about what it'd be like," he says, nodding toward the nearby waterfront. "First of all, to be in the playoffs. Then to get a good run going would be awesome."
. I always suspected.
