TRAIKOS: Hard to believe that Jack Eichel is on pace to missing the playoffs for a seventh straight year
Jack Eichel #JackEichel
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Vegas Golden Knights center Jack Eichel skates with the puck during the warmup period against the Calgary Flames at Scotiabank Saddledome. Photo by Sergei Belski /USA TODAY Sports Article content
On Monday, Jack Eichel was named the Vegas Golden Knight’s nominee for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, which “best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to the game.”
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Presumably, it was for persevering after first injuring his neck last season and then undergoing experimental disc-replacement surgery in November. But with Eichel on the brink of missing the playoffs for a seventh straight season, we could be talking about a different level of dedication to the game.
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Or rather, make that devastation.
Either way, this is not what anyone had expected when Vegas acquired Eichel from Buffalo six months ago. Back then, the trade — which many analysts ruled as one-sided in Vegas’ favour— was supposed to turn the Golden Knights into a Stanley Cup contender, while simultaneously causing the Sabres to regret ever parting with a player who was selected second-overall in the Connor McDavid draft.
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Even the hard-to-please Darryl Sutter seemed impressed.
“When they have the full squad, they’re the favourites to win the Stanley Cup,” said the Flames head coach. “They have a $100-million payroll, so they have to figure out how to keep 20 out.”
Alas, the salary cap wasn’t the only thing Vegas has failed to figure out. With less than a week remaining in the regular season, the Golden Knights remain on the outside looking in at a playoff spot that has all but slipped from their grasp. Three points back of the final wild card spot with three games remaining, they could be officially eliminated if they fail to beat the eighth-place Dallas Stars in regulation on Tuesday.
Essentially, they need to run the table. And following a blown 5-4 overtime loss to San Jose on Sunday, they now need to get a lot of help from the teams they are chasing in the standings.
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“There’s no time to sulk,” winger Max Pacioretty told reporters. “There’s no choice now. We have to find the confidence.”
Confidence wasn’t supposed to be a problem for Vegas. Neither was relying on luck.
On paper, this might be the best team in the NHL. After all, Vegas reached the Stanley Cup final as an expansion team in 2018 with a bunch of cast-offs that nobody wanted. Now, they have a roster of all-stars such as Eichel, Mark Stone and Alex Pietrangelo — as well as the lack of cap space to prove it.
Then again, $100-million doesn’t buy you what it used to.
With Eichel in the lineup, the Golden Knights are 14-14-3. In a bit of schadenfreude, the Sabres are 15-14-3 during that same span.
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It turns out that Eichel, who has 12 goals and 21 points in 31 games, hasn’t been the missing piece for a team that lost in the conference final in each of the past two years. He’s just been a piece that has a knack for continually missing the mark. How else to explain why Vegas, which is so stacked that 29-goal Jonathan Marchessault is playing on the third line, is on the outside looking in?
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Sure, injuries have hurt them. Eichel, Stone and Pacioretty have combined to miss 130 games this season, while defenceman Alec Martinez has appeared in only 23 games. On Tuesday, the news got worse, with the team announcing that goalie Robin Lehner would be undergoing season-ending surgery. Then again, Los Angeles has found a way to keep winning games without Drew Doughty, who is out for the rest of the season.
Vegas, meanwhile, continues to find new ways to lose them.
Last week, they were shutout by the Oilers, a team that no one gets shutout by. Two days later, they were stymied by minor-league goalie Andrew Hammond, who picked up his first win of the season with the New Jersey Devils. Vegas did manage to squeeze out an overtime win against Washington last Wednesday, but in the process lost Lehner, who was pulled after allowing a goal on 13 shots in the first period and has not played since.
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Then came Sunday’s “devastating loss” to the Sharks.
Vegas was leading 4-2 with two minutes remaining in the third period when San Jose pulled its goalie and scored twice, the tying goal coming with 0.9 seconds before the buzzer sounded. The Sharks then stole the extra point in the overtime shootout.
“We were confident in that room that we could have easily won these last four games,” said Stone. “Unfortunately, we lost this one in overtime. So now we have to win that game on Tuesday night in Dallas and hope for the best.”
For the past month or so, the hope had been that the Golden Knights would sneak into the playoffs. Do that, some said, and they could be a first-round headache for the Colorado Avalanche. But following Sunday’s loss to the Sharks, that’s now looking less and less likely as a possibility.
As of Monday, Vegas had a 9.2% chance of qualifying for the playoffs. Even if they made it in, the cracks in the foundation are starting to show. Eichel has gone the past four games without a point. No one knows what is going on with Lehner.
This no longer looks like a Stanley Cup team. With an ageing roster and little cap flexibility, it now looks like a team primed for a rebuild.
“You hope that it doesn’t cost us a playoff spot,” said head coach Peter DeBoer. “If it does, that’s a tough one to sleep on all summer.”
mtraikos@postmedia.com
twitter.com/Michael_Traikos
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