Jack Eichel revealed in a recent interview that the Calgary Flames and the Vegas Golden Knights were the two finalists when the Buffalo Sabres were looking to trade him in 2021.
Eichel was eventually traded to Vegas in a blockbuster deal in November of that year.
“I think as it went on different teams came in and out of the mix,” Eichel said on the Empty Netters podcast earlier this month. “At the beginning, there were some teams out east trying to make things happen… I think as the summer went on you always hear different teams call. Whether it was Minnesota, Carolina or, there was a period in the early fall, where it was Colorado.
“…But when it came down to it, towards the end, it was Calgary and Vegas.”
Eichel said the Avalanche were involved in the discussions up until around the start of training camps for the 2021-22 season, and then the Flames and Golden Knights were the last teams remaining for the final two months before the trade happened on Nov. 4.
The 28-year-old forward didn’t reveal much else about the role the Flames played in the process but he did say he was happy with the result.
“During the process there was definitely teams that I wanted to go to more than others and (Vegas) was one of those places,” Eichel said. “I was very happy with the outcome. I just thought Vegas checked so many boxes for me… they want to win every year, it’s just a great organization.”
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The Eichel trade saga dominated headlines for most of 2021 and stemmed from a back surgery he wanted to have that the Sabres were opposed to since it had never been performed on a hockey player before.
The relationship between Eichel and the Sabres deteriorated to the point that he was stripped of the captaincy. But Eichel held firm in his preferred procedure and he went under the knife one week after the trade to Vegas.
“I was going to stay true to what I believed in. I understand that some people probably wouldn’t feel comfortable doing what I’m doing, but I’m the only person that has to live with this decision the rest of their life,” Eichel told Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman in an exclusive interview on the day he was traded. “I feel I’ve done enough research, I’ve put myself at ease with it that I know I’m making the right decision. I obviously wouldn’t be doing this and wouldn’t have went through this whole process if I didn’t really, really believe that I’m doing this right.”
Eichel made his Golden Knights debut in February of 2022 and the fit with Vegas on the ice has been a complete success, capped by winning the Stanley Cup in 2022-23. Eichel has 128 points in 134 games with the Golden Knights and had 26 points in 20 playoff games last spring en route to the championship.
The Flames, on the other hand, went through a transformative off-season only months after Eichel landed in Vegas with both Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau leaving and Jonathan Hubderdeau and Nazem Kadri joining the roster. How would an Eichel addition have changed the course of the Flames’ trajectory? We’ll never know.
