Eichel’s playoff blues make him want it more
Hockey players might love playing hockey. But they don’t always like watching it. Certainly not once their own season is done.
After all, most hockey players don’t want to be reminded of what could have been.
Jack Eichel is not like most hockey players.
The Buffalo Sabres captain watched the entire playoffs even though his team failed to qualify for them. He watched as the Tampa Bay Lightning and Calgary Flames were upset in the first round and he watched until the end as the Carolina Hurricanes and St. Louis Blues went further than anyone could have imagined.
He saw former teammate Ryan O’Reilly, who Buffalo traded to
St. Louis for practically nothing, hoist the Stanley Cup.
Eichel bought a ticket for
Game 7 of the final. He sat in the stands at TD Garden in Boston. He called it a “cool experience.” Others might have called it “torturous.”
The Bruins, who play in a city of champions, were in their third Cup final in nine years. They won it all in 2011. The Blues, meanwhile, ended a championship drought that was only three years longer than the Sabres’.
Why bother? Why not book a flight to Cancun and forget about hockey altogether?
“I wanted to go for the experience and it was a great experience,” said Eichel. “Just seeing the celebration and the emotion that was shown from the guys, it makes you want it that much more.”
It’s hard to imagine Eichel needing any more motivation.
We talk about how the Edmonton Oilers have wasted three of the first four years of Connor McDavid’s career. But what Eichel has gone through might be even worse.
He’s never made the playoffs. He’s never even come close.
Yet if there was a lesson learned from watching the Blues win it all last season, it was that even when you’re not close, you’re actually closer than you may think.
The Sabres finished the year ranked 13th out of 16 teams in the Eastern Conference, but they had been the best team in the NHL after winning 10 straight games at the end of November. The Blues, meanwhile, were the worst team in the NHL at the beginning of January before turning things around in the second half of the season.
Flip their scripts and it could have been Eichel coming off a
Cup hangover these days. Or at least that’s the message heading into this year.
It was impossible for the whole hockey world not to take notice. A year after an expansion team went to the Stanley Cup final, parity ran amok in the NHL. Whether it was the Islanders reaching the second round without John Tavares or the Presidents’ Trophy winner getting swept by the eighth-seeded team in their conference, anything can happen in the playoffs. You just have to get in.
It wasn’t that the Blues got into the playoffs. It was how they got in. The team might have been lost for the first half of the season, but no one was hotter in the final few months when it mattered the most.
Did the Sabres underperform or were they just not good enough?
That’s the question as the Sabres enter the season under new head coach Ralph Krueger — Eichel’s third in five years. Of course, getting into the playoffs won’t be easy. Not when the Sabres are playing in a division that includes the Lightning, Bruins, Leafs and a Florida Panthers team that hired head coach Joel Quenneville and signed goalie Sergei Bobrovsky in the summer
“There’s so many good players, good teams in the division,” said Eichel. “It’s tough, for sure. But it’s a good challenge.”