By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The Vegas Golden Knights got their man.
The Buffalo Sabres’ Jack Eichel, a 25-year-old considered a premier talent, is a member of the Golden Knights.
The VGK acquired Eichel and a conditional pick for popular third line player Alex Tuch, young Peyton Krebs, and two conditional picks.
VGK General Manager Kelly McCrimmon had this to say this morning: “In Jack Eichel, we are getting a player that I think is one of the top players in the league, one of the top centers in the league, and he’s in the prime of his career as a player who has just turned 25 years old. It addresses a need in our organization. For me, when you look at what an NHL contending team should look like, he’s a really important piece of that.
“When we brought in Alex Pietrangelo, part of the motivation behind that addition was that a Stanley Cup Champion needs a defenseman like that. We feel the same way about an elite center and Jack gives us that. The price was high for him, obviously, in terms of what we have sent to Buffalo. At the same time, for a player of this talent, it should be high.”
The Knights can fit Eichel in between wingers Max Pacioretty and Mark Stone — two other major players whom the VGK have traded for in blockbuster deals in prior seasons — and create one of the best lines in the league.
McCrimmon commented about the surgery facing Eichel: “He will have surgery. He will have the ADR, which is artificial disk replacement. It’s unique in relation to NHL players. It’s not necessarily that unique in terms of society, but there has never been an NHL player to have this type of surgery. We have a lot of respect for the work that has gone into this from his agent, his second-opinion doctors, and the specialists and doctors that he’s seen in this field. We’ll defer to their wishes and respect the choices that they’re making, based on knowing how much work they’ve done to prepare themselves for surgery. Obviously, they’re acting in what they believe is in the best interest of Jack’s health, not only in the short-term, but in the long-term.”
When will Eichel be ready to play? McCrimmon thinks in three to five months: “I keep thinking four to five months, three to four months, but I say that because I see you all grab your pens and write it down. We don’t know. We really don’t know. I am not trying to suggest that we do know, but that might be the best guess I can give you right now. We look at the surgery in general terms. People in martial arts have had this surgery. People in contact sports have had this surgery. No one in hockey has had this surgery. Does that put some uncertainty into it? I guess it does. Do we have a comfort level that he will return to full health? We do.”
The Golden Knights traded away Tuch, an original Misfit who had missed many games in his career because of injuries but was very popular off the ice with fans.
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Here’s how the draft picks will work, according to the VGK:
Eichel is a legitimate star in the National Hockey League. At 25 and even with an injury, Eichel is a veteran of 375 NHL games, all with Buffalo.
He piled up 39 goals and 216 assists for 355 points, reaching 20 goals or more in four seasons. Last season, he finished with 18 points (2 G, 16 A) in 21 games, which was limited because of injury. The North Chelmsford, Massachusetts native was Buffalo’s captain from the start of the 2018-19 season and was selected to three All-Star games in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He was named to the 2016 NHL All-Rookie Team.
Eichel has a $10 million-a-year salary and the Knights will have to perform salary cap gymnastics to fit that under the NHL’s $81.5 million salary cap.
Tuch had an average annual salary of $4.75 million, while Krebs had a cap hit of about $765,000. The seed of acquiring Eichel was likely in the salary dumps of popular players Marc-Andre Fleury and Ryan Reaves, while other VGK players like Reilly Smith and Brayden McNabb may have to leave some day to clear salary cap space.
The NHL is an always evolving league. There are situations with respect to player contacts that might make them available, or situations with the salary cap that might make players available, or situations with the wishes of players. I think you see now a lot of star players are looking at shorter deals to maintain a little more flexibility or control of their future. There are different situations that present themselves. We are not always interested in every situation that comes forward. There are certain players that we have aggressively gone after and tried to bring into our organization. Jack is one of those. The age of the player, he is 25 years old. When you look at the National Hockey League as a whole, who those top centers are when you look at the Western Conference. You got Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Anze Kopitar. You go to the east, you got Barkov, Barzel, Crosby, Malkin. I’m sure I’m missing a few, but you have that elite layer of player that I think Jack comfortably slots into. Because of that, again based off what I would say we have identified as a need if we could address that this way, we felt we would not be doing our organization justice if we failed to pursue it. That is the approach that we took. That doesn’t mean you are going to be able to complete a trade. With a lot of teams included, where you have discussions with teams and there isn’t a finish line in sight, or a fit, or a price a team is comfortable with either giving or receiving. When Jack Eichel was available, when it was apparent he may be moved, I guess what we knew to start with was that we were interested. That brings us to today. — Golden Knights General Manager Kelly McCrimmon
Tuch was a power forward and made a splash with his speedy skating and goal-scoring. He was an immensely popular original Golden Knights player with fans.
He’s a member of our original team and a player that we acquired from Minnesota in expansion. He’s gone from being a good, young prospect to being a tremendous young player in our organization. He’s a quality person. Wish him nothing but the best and thank him for his time in our organization. He’s a really exciting player that, being from New York, I think will do great things for the Sabres organization. — VGK GM Kelly McCrimmon
Here are some pics of Tuch through the years.
Tuch used Twitter to say his goodbyes to Las Vegas:
McCrimmon on Krebs: “A quality young man, a high draft pick of our team, and a player that had made the NHL right out of camp. I think he’s going to have a long career as a real productive forward. He is a player that coaches love, whether it is his coaches in junior, coaches on Canada’s national junior team, last year during his time spent in the American Hockey League with our team in Henderson, and then this year with our NHL team under Pete DeBoer. Again, with Peyton, we wish him a great career. I hope that he does really, really well.”