What is Jack thinking?
Another sad Buffalo Sabres season closes this week, the team’s eighth straight without a playoff berth and sixth straight without, in the end, hardly a sniff of one.
The Sabres are 23 points out of the last postseason spot in the East with two games left. Last year, they finished 35 points out. In the two years prior, led by Dan Bylsma and Tim Murray, they finished 12 and 17 points behind, respectively.
Compared with their predecessors, Sabres teams led by Phil Housley and Jason Botterill have performed measurably and decidedly worse.
That’s saying something.
It was four years ago this week when Sabres fans nervously watched their team clinch last place in the league – the only thing in the last eight years of Sabres hockey that qualifies as a meaningful accomplishment. We knew then that Jack Eichel – if not Connor McDavid – would be a Sabre.
Eichel has lived up to the supremely lofty expectations of that time. I guess I should say that this is my opinion, but could anyone have a different one? Eichel has established himself as an elite point producer. This is how he was advertised.
Comparisons to the game’s other top forwards and other seasons’ No. 1 picks can and will always be made, and that Eichel allows for that says almost everything you need to know about his game.
Yet, four years have gone by and the Sabres are still way out of playoff contention.
I wonder what Eichel is thinking.