Jack Eichel‘s captain status has been stripped from him by the Buffalo Sabres organization. This move was announced earlier today after Eichel failed his physical. This is the latest continuation in the battle between Eichel and the Sabres over the decision to get surgery on his neck.
“I spoke to Jack two days ago, I spoke to the team yesterday and addressed this, Jack Eichel is no longer the captain of the Buffalo Sabres. From our perspective, the captain is your heartbeat of your team, and we are in a situation where we felt we needed to make that decision.” pic.twitter.com/K0vajWnCR0
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) September 23, 2021
Jack Eichel Captaincy Stripped By Sabres
The right-shooting center has spent his entire career with the Sabres, for better or for worse. Last season, he played 21 games, scoring twice and dishing out 16 assists for 18 points. His faceoff percentage was just under 50%, and he took 70.4% of his starts in the offensive zone. He was clearly the Sabres’ best player on the ice, with a Corsi For of 63.0% and a relative Corsi of 18.3. Over his six-year career, Eichel has played in 375 games, scoring 139 times, putting up 216 assists to combine for 355 points.
Moving Forward For Buffalo
This entire situation is the worst-case scenario for the Sabres. Eichel is without a doubt the best player on the Sabres. However, he disagrees with the team on how to approach recovering from his injury. This disagreement has created tension between the two parties and eventually led to Eichel’s “C” patch being taken off his jersey. The Sabres have a couple of options to resolve this conflict.
They could let Eichel do what he wants in regards to his surgery, and move forward from there. If that doesn’t seem right, they could keep pushing Eichel to do what the organization and team doctors think is best for him. The final option is to get him off the team somehow, likely through a trade, and offload the problem onto another team. Keeping Eichel is the Sabres’ best chance to have their rebuild go smoothly so that last option is unlikely. These next few weeks will determine Eichel’s future with the Sabres organization.
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