@boosbuzzsabres
I had an interesting little twitter exchange with a Leafs fan the other day after the Buffalo Sabres lost 5-3 at Toronto. It started with this tweet from Steve Kournianos of The Draft Analysis:
"All I heard on the radio today was how Jack Eichel's better than Auston Matthews and he (Matthews) doesn't dominate games etc.
Two goals against a surging division rival (Buffalo) and (now) one point out of 2nd place. Huge win. Huge Performance.
You should try to give the kid some credit every now and again."
Auston Matthews is a supreme talent and has shown it time and again. No one should ever dispute that. Then again, so is Jack Eichel, a player who had given us glimpses of dominating games through his first four seasons but had never done so to the extent he has during his 17-game point streak. Apparently he was getting a lot of well deserved attention even in the Center of the Hockey Universe which, obviously, didn't sit very well with Kournianos.
In a retort I pointed out that although Matthews is indeed great, Eichel has no where near the talent surrounding him, to which a Leafs fan replied, "Playing with (Jeff) Skinner counts for nothing?" To which I challenged, "Name Buffalo's No. 2 center and right winger on that line. Name their third line" before eventually rattling off the names of John Tavares, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Kasperi Kapanen skating up front for the Leafs.
Point being, Eichel was a dominant force for the Sabres for almost a full month. He was deserved of all the accolades he received and, yes, he's been better than Matthews especially when you consider what he has surrounding him, the lack of which was on display last night against the Philadelphia Flyers as Eichel was out with an "upper body injury."
For those of us in Sabreland, it was a night to be feared. Eichel had taken his pregame skate but some 10 minutes or so before puck drop, he was out and previous healthy scratch Conor Sheary was in. For the first time this season, the weight of the forward group fell upon the shoulders of Skinner, Sam Reinhart, Victor Olofsson and Marcus Johansson with the latter three making up a top line that combined for four shots on goal.
Buffalo allowed three goals in each of the first two periods while being outshot 25-9 and lost 6-1 to the Flyers in what was one of their poorest performances since the tank years. At least those Sabres teams from 2013-15 had an excuse as they were purposely stripped of all talent in order to get the highest possible pick in those draft years. The 2014 NHL Draft yielded Reinhart and the 2015 one gave them Eichel. Buffalo is now two general managers and three coaches removed from those drafts and have gone through a roster turnover that has three players left from those tank years--Zemgus Girgensons and Johan Larsson up front, Rasmus Ristolainen on the blueline.
The Sabres had played without Eichel before. They began the 2016-17 season as the sophomore center suffered and injury just prior to opening night in a stretch where they were also without top-six left winger Evander Kane, who'd been felled in the opener and would return nine games before Eichel. Buffalo went 7-9-5 during Eichel's absence with their worst losses being 4-0 shutouts vs. Minnesota and at Boston.
Those were not fun games to watch. Kyle Okposo led the team in scoring with 13 points (6+7,) Reinhart was next with 10 points (4+6) and Matt Moulson was leading the team with seven goals and his nine points was tied third on the team with Ryan O'Reilly and Ristolainen. Ten of Okposo, Reinhart and Moulson's combined 17 goals and 21 of their 32 points came on the powerplay while all of O'Reilly's four goals and five of his nine points came with the man advantage.
Which tells you a little bit about what it was like to watch this team play most of the game at even strength.
There's no sense in getting into individual performances, or better yet the lack there-of, from last night as it was generally ugly. But perhaps the most troubling aspect of last night had to do with Buffalo's skilled players and how they didn't know how to react to being without Eichel. Or maybe even more to the point, is how some of them found no intestinal fortitude in Eichel's absence.
The Sabres last night looked like the Sabres post-Lucic/Miller back in 2011, when Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic ran Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller and he effectively castrated the Sabres as a team. The eventual results of that hit and the subsequent 6-2 beatdown by Boston that night wouldn't show up until five weeks later when Terry Pegula proudly brought his new team into Pittsburgh, his adpoted model for a franchise, and watched them get blown out of the building by the Penguins 8-3. Pegula's disgust with the team's play was not cloaked post-game and later that season his Sabres entered tank-mode and would begin a full, scorched-earth rebuild.
Is last night the same?
There are parallels, but a bit of caution is in order as it's only one game. But it is troubling, especially for those of us who had watched the post Drury/Briere Sabres wallow in mediocrity before being fully exposed by the Lucic/Miller incident as the soft-but-skilled team they really were.
That said, those teams did not have Eichel, a player who's shown us this year that he can carry a team on his back, even one with a lot of passengers which seems to be the case here. That's the difference between Eichel and Matthews and that's why Eichel has been getting deserved attention this past month.
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Although I didn't want to get into individual names, I will point out one Buffalo player in particular and an event surrounding him last night.
Rasmus Dahlin is a young and very talented defenseman for the Sabres and he's been enduring the slings and arrows of his talents in the form of cheap shots thrown his way by the opposition, one of them landing him on the injured list with a concussion. Last night was no exception as he got cross-checked by both Travis Konecny and Flyers captain Claude Giroux with an additional whack at his ankle courtesy of Giroux. Instead of scurrying off, Dahlin confronted the duo and laid some wood on Konecny's face.
Props to him for sticking up for himself and showing some kahunas.
Dahlin has a little edge to his game and as he's learning what makes the NHL tick. He was asked after the game about the scrum and Dahlin told the gathered media, "Two guys came after me and I tried to protect myself."
Good for him. And good for Ristolainen who had Dahlin's back and entered the fray looking to take on both Giroux and Konecny and ended up getting in a little shot in on Giroux.
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One final note.
Eichel's 17-game point streak has come to the end because of his injury, according to the NHL. It was the longest streak in the league this year and he fell one-game short of tying the franchise record set by Sabres legend Gilbert Perreault.
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