A lot of the attention surrounding the Buffalo Sabres this offseason has been with the ongoing Jack Eichel saga.
After suffering a herniated disk in his neck back in March, the Sabres captain has been looking to undergo an artificial disk replacement surgery that would help him have a quicker recovery period and get him feeling healthy and back on the ice sooner. However, this type of surgery has never been done on a National Hockey League player, which has thrown up the red flag for general manager Kevyn Adams and the rest of the Sabres organization.
Eichel expressed his displeasure with the organization at his end-of-season conference call in May, saying there was a "disconnect" between him and the team over the handling of the treatment of his neck.
Since then, Adams has been actively taking trade calls on the 24-year-old center, but to no avail. Teams have shied away from any deal with the Sabres over the uncertainty of the injury and the recovery process, in addition to the price tag the Sabres are asking for in return.
Adams has now dug in on trade negotiations to get the best possible value in a potential return for Eichel. While Adams says he's not going to let any distractions influence him to trade the former second overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, Eichel's representatives have expressed their displeasure with the organization, saying, "The process is not working."
As the days continue to bleed into weeks, it is looking more and more like Eichel could be on the roster when the rest of the team reports to training camp some time in mid-to-late September.
Sabres head coach Don Granato has not been involved in any discussions with Eichel about his future in Buffalo, and he says he doesn't plan on getting involved unless otherwise.
"I will stay out of any of the stuff that you would read between the management and the player any time unless I was asked. If I was asked to be involved in it, I would," Granato said during an appearance on the "Cam and Strick Podcast" with former NHLer Cam Janssen and St. Louis Blues rinkside reporter Andy Strickland. "I'm not asked to be involved in this one, and that's good, because I want my relationship with Jack to just be player-coach. If Jack's back and playing with the Buffalo Sabres, I'm as excited as anybody to have him, probably more than that. If that happens, that happens. It'd be a great day for me, and I will do whatever I can to get Jack playing his best, like I focus on with any guy.
"I just don't like drama. I hate drama and getting involved in that. It's just nothing but a distraction. On Day 1 of training camp, whatever players we have there, that's what I'm working with. That's it. In the interim, I'm not going to play the hypothetical 'this, that or whatever.' ... I don't need to spend any time or energy into that. Others are handling it, and I'll just trust that process."
Granato did not get a chance to coach Eichel this past season after he took over for Ralph Krueger on an interim basis in Buffalo on March 17. The 54-year-old led the team to a 9-16-3 record in 28 games in the 2020-21 season after the Sabres started the year with an abysmal 6-18-4 record.
While the 28-game record may not indicate any impressive turnaround from the group on paper, the team responded incredibly well under the tutelage of Granato. Some of the players on the roster started to turn their games around drastically under new leadership, while younger players like Casey Mittelstadt, Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin, among others, saw their production rapidly grow over time.
However, when Granato took the reins as the interim head coach in Buffalo, he said it was not easy to get his group to turn things around, at first.
"I talked to our entire staff before I talked to the players and pushed them to be leaders and tried to sell them that they are leaders. They're going to influence guys positively or negatively. Be aware of that," Granato said. "As far as our team with the culture and belief, they belief system was shot. The first meeting, most of the guys had their heads down. I had to tell them to pick their heads up.
"If you're a coach, you have to make your players believe, which means you have to bring clarity to them so they see exactly what you see or what you are laying out, your vision. We felt overwhelmed. We're losing a game and we didn't know why. We just felt overwhelmed."
When aspects of the Sabres' game were made more clear and the mistakes on a nightly basis were cleaned up, Granato said it brought some life back into the group later in the season.
"Really the big component was to bring some clarity to, 'OK, the other team is not overwhelming us. We lost the game because we didn't execute on the things that were within our control,'" the Sabres head coach said. "That was what we had at the end of the year when the players left. I talked to numerous players that said they didn't even want to go home. I remember the media asking us with five games left, 'Coach, are you worried about the last five games? Your team has nothing to play for.' I said that's the opposite. They don't want to go home. I said, 'You can ask them that when they come in front of you, but they're as engaged as ever because now they can see ways to win.'"
For the work that Granato put in with the group and the results that were starting to come to fruition, the Sabres decided to remove the interim tag from his title and make him the 20th head coach in franchise history.
While the official hire of Granato was another major event for the Sabres in the 2021 offseason, Buffalo also picked with the first overall selection in the 2021 NHL Draft. This after the Sabres finished with the worst regular season record in the league, while also getting the luck of the draw in the NHL Draft Lottery.
With the first pick in the 2021 draft, the Sabres went on to select defenseman Owen Power from the University of Michigan.
Although Granato has yet to work with Power on the ice as head coach of the Sabres, he has quite a bit of familiarity with the Mississauga, Ontario native dating back to his teenager years. It didn't take him long to realize that Power was going to be a high draft pick when his draft year came.
"I've watched Owen since he was probably 14-years-old. First time I watched him was up in Toronto," Granato said. "When I was in Chicago with the Blackhawks, I'd go watch him practice. I don't think anybody knows this, I don't think anybody with the Sabres knows this, but I knew his mom and dad, known them since way back then. I would go over and watch him practice, and then go talk to him after a game or after practice. Ironically, I end up in Buffalo and he ends up as the first pick overall, so quite amazing that our paths crossed."
"I can tell you when I watched him as a kid; First time I saw him, I was a coach at the University of Wisconsin and thought, 'Boy, I'd love to have this kid.' I had just left the [U.S.] National Team, and I could remember telling [my brother] Tony, at the time, much like I said about Auston Matthews, I said about Owen - He's going to be a high, high draft pick. That happened, and we obviously drafted him."
As was reported by Lance Lysowski from The Buffalo News on Thursday, Power is going to take another season playing with the Wolverines, as he will return to Ann Arbor for his sophomore campaign. The 18-year-old was able to produce three goals and 13 assists for 16 points in 26 games with Michigan last year, while also winning a gold medal for Team Canada at the 2021 IIHF World Championship in Latvia.
Power will have high aspirations for the upcoming season, as the Wolverines are expected to compete, and likely be favorites to win a NCAA title. He will be playing on a Michigan team with four of the top-five picks from the 2021 NHL Draft on the roster.
It is also expected that Power will compete with Canada at the 2022 IIHF World Junior Championship this December and January in Red Deer and Edmonton, Alberta.
At the time of the discussion, Granato and the Sabres were still not sure whether Power was going to return to Michigan or make the jump to the NHL. Regardless of the decision, Granato was, and is still not worried about his development en route to Buffalo.
"He's going to be fine with development," Granato said. "He's not in the category of players I would worry about their development. He's going to develop whether it's in college or with us, because of the skill set that he has in the league. I say that with the hindsight of watching him against men at the men's World Championship. He handled himself fine there, and that's a real good indicator that he could develop at the NHL level, as well."
You can listen to the entire podcast with Granato below: