BUFFALO, N.Y. – Jack’s back. The season can truly begin.
For as much as the Buffalo Sabres tried to keep up appearances while playing 21 games without injured superstar Jack Eichel, there is no denying now that they had been waiting for the 20-year-old centre to lift all boats.
You see, there hasn’t been very much excitement around KeyBank Center this season. Not with the 8-9-5 Sabres scuffling along at 1.95 goals per game.
But on Thursday morning before hosting the New York Rangers – the first game here with No. 15 in the lineup – the mood among the locals was decidedly more upbeat.
“We need to do something to get (the fans) into the game,” said Sabres coach Dan Bylsma. “I know Jack’s one of those guys that gets everybody on their feet when he has the puck and touches the puck. That was the case last year.
“A lot of the excitement in the building came from that anticipation of Jack having the puck and making a play with speed.”
He needed all of four shifts in Ottawa earlier this week to remind everyone what the Sabres had been missing while he was sidelined with a high ankle sprain.
Buffalo Sabres’ Jack Eichel (15) celebrates his goal against the Ottawa Senators with teammates on Tuesday, November 29, 2016. (Fred Chartrand/CP)
Eichel found Kyle Okposo for a power-play goal before beating Craig Anderson himself in the opening 10 minutes. That got Buffalo rolling towards a 5-4 victory over the Senators that Okposo described as a “sigh of relief.”
“We’d been scoring one goal (per game) for it seems like a month,” said Okposo, the team leader with seven goals and 15 points. “I don’t know if it’s bad luck. Obviously, you can get into the all analytics you want – PDO and all that stuff – but at the end of the day you’ve got to put the puck in the net. We’ve just got to keep trusting the fact that we’re playing well.
“When we play well, we do certain things that cause us to have those chances and cause us to get in the offensive zone and create scoring chances.”
It certainly doesn’t hurt to welcome back a centre capable of tilting the game on his own.
The Sabres believe they’re due for something of a correction after shooting at a NHL-worst 5.24 per cent so far. They made for an interesting comparison with a Rangers team humming along at an unsustainable 11.6 per cent prior to Thursday’s game.
“Over time, we all shoot nine per cent,” said Bylsma. “I think the best quality chances come from the type the Rangers seem to get, which is longer transition and longer plays. We’re a team that has been good at generating offence from the offensive zone and those shooting percentages tend to be less. That’s what we’ve seen from our team.
“We’re going to hope that we get to the nine per cent average and to do that we’re going to have to shoot about 14 per cent the rest of the way this season.”
This is where Eichel comes in.
His lethal combination of speed and puck skills makes him just as much of a danger on the rush as he is off the cycle. That was evident during a 24-goal, 56-point rookie campaign that he may be capable of besting in 2016-17 despite missing a quarter of the schedule.
“I’m sure if he’d been playing all year he’d be right up there in the conversation with (Patrik) Laine and (Connor) McDavid and (Mark) Scheifele and all these guys that are kind of taking the league by storm,” said Okposo.
In the NHL, we anoint our saviours young. And that’s just how Eichel has been viewed in Buffalo since getting picked No. 2 overall in 2015.
No wonder the clouds rolled in with eight minutes left in the final practice before the season, when he awkwardly got his left leg caught beneath him while falling during a drill.
It was a fluke incident and carried some serious ramifications for the Sabres, especially when you consider the kind of impact other game-breaking centres like McDavid and Auston Matthews have already had. The Oilers and Maple Leafs are each measurably different when they’re playing and when they’re not.
There is no guarantee Eichel will have the same effect in Buffalo right away, not with the nature of the injury he’s returning from. Teammate Ryan O’Reilly had a high ankle sprain when he played for Colorado and says the biggest hurdle to recovery is “being confident in your stride.”
“I think it’s just having the strength,” he said. “Sometimes your push might not be there like you want it to be and you might not have the flexibility there that it once was, but once you get it back it’s an injury that you don’t notice that much.”
Bylsma thought it was “remarkable” that Eichel reported feeling no ill-effects from the injury in his first game back. Still, the coach tried to limit his ice time somewhat, especially when he showed some signs of fatigue after the initial surge of adrenaline wore off.
That will continue to be a balancing act as the Sabres try to work themselves back into the Eastern Conference playoff race, something that will likely only happen if Eichel carries them there.
It might sound like a lot to ask. But given the early scoring woes, it can’t be completely ruled out.
“I mean watching him and seeing how effective he was, he didn’t really miss a beat,” said O’Reilly. “I think he’s only going to be better. The first one’s about getting a feel, but he still impacts the game so much.
“The way he’s skating, when he gets the puck he protects it so well – he’s so strong – it’s definitely nice to have back. It makes us a lot more dangerous.”
