The Buffalo Sabres announced that centreman Jack Eichel would not play on Thursday against the New Jersey Devils due to a lower-body injury. The Sabres captain took part in the warmups but was scratched right before the puck drop.
INJURY UPDATE: Jack Eichel will not play tonight due to a lower-body injury.
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) February 26, 2021
Buffalo Sabres Scratch Jack Eichel Due to Injury
After not participating in the morning practice on Thursday, Jack Eichel was expected to play against New Jersey.
The Sabres coach Ralph Krueger revealed in an interview with WGR 550 that Eichel sustained an injury before training camp. It’s unknown if the injury is related to the captain being scratched.
Krueger defended Eichel and connected the lack of production on goals to the injury. According to the Buffalo coach, it impacted the player’s preparation for the 2020-21 season.
“Everybody has to realize that he had an injury pre-training camp that pretty well parked him from doing a lot of physical activities for multiple weeks,” Krueger said on WGR 550, according to NHL.com. “He started training camp a week delayed. The game pace that we’ve had and the forced almost eight-day break (for NHL COVID-19 protocol) that everyone had a few weeks ago, he has worked as hard as anybody else to get himself up to speed. But all the circumstances are preventing him from being at 100 percent physical condition and shape because we just have no practices and we have no training time between the games.”
So far this season, Eichel has scored 2 goals and 12 assists for 14 points in 16 games played.
[pickup_prop id=”3689″]
Over his six-year NHL career, the 24-year-old centre has 139 goals and 212 assists for 351 career points in 370 career games. He was the Sabres’s second pick in the first round of the 2015 NHL Draft.
The Sabres have already lost defenceman Jake McCabe and William Borgen to injuries. They are still waiting for Rasmus Ristolainen to return from his traumatic experience with COVID.
The team also announced during the first intermission on Thursday that goaltender Linus Ullmark was not going to return for the rest of the game. Updates are still to be provided by the team.
INJURY UPDATE: Goaltender Linus Ullmark will not return to tonight’s game.
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) February 26, 2021
Main Photo:
Embed from Getty Images
