I'm salty.
At least I can admit it, unlike someone else that was in Buffalo on Thursday night.
I was bracing for this game between the Buffalo Sabres and Vegas Golden Knights, due to the fact that I felt for Jack Eichel, in regards to his injury. I was of the mindset that Eichel was going to be booed excessively and unfairly.
But in one fell swoop, all of Sabres fandom can become unified for the first time since his draft year in 2015.
"Yeah, that's the loudest I've heard this building ever. Really," Eichel said. "It only took seven years and me leaving to get into the game."
Eichel sounded so petty and bitter following Buffalo's 3-1 win over the Golden Knights. Eichel might have been a bit salty after the loss, after the boos. While he won't admit that, his tone and body language certainly painted the picture.
There have been plenty of times during the Sabres' playoff drought that KeyBank Center was not into it. Most recently, it was when former head coach Ralph Krueger decided to suck any and all fun out of the game, and we all had to suffer for it. There have been plenty of losses over 10 years to turn this fan base into one of the most apathetic in all of sports.
This past offseason saw the team blow up the core that could not take that step, and attendance has cratered as a new re-build began.
But Eichel must have forgotten just how dedicated this fan base was to him.
How the fans flocked to a prospects game that the team played at the arena for 18,000 people to get their first glimpse at Eichel in a Sabres uniform. Eichel clearly forgot how the fans popped off when the tank hero scored his first goal in Buffalo (on current Sabres goaltender Craig Anderson, funny enough. Congrats on 300 wins, Craig!), in his first NHL game. He forgot how loud KeyBank Center got as the Sabres started hot and had a 10-game winning streak.
Oh yeah, and he must have forgotten how loud we were about him before he even arrived in Buffalo.
Hell, there was a campaign - on this very station - to cheer for a Sabres team to lose like there was no tomorrow. Yes, a 25% shot chance at Connor McDavid was a reason for it. However, the guarantee of landing, at least, Eichel was the biggest reason for the tank to carry the airwaves for so long in 2015.
At that time, I was just a college kid at Buffalo State with some of my now better known classmates, Brayton Wilson and Joe DiBiase. We'd listen to Howard Simon and Jeremy White go hardcore on the tank, getting in fights with other media members about it. I remember Bulldog with "garagegaragegaragegarage" to ensure Eichel as a guarantee. The "Group Howl". This city was making waves in the news after cheering a goal against them in the infamous "Tank Bowl" versus the Arizona Coyotes.
We made plenty of damn noise here for Eichel before he showed up, and we still did when he was here. We kept on finding reasons to make noise, even with an Eichel-led team that finished no higher than 23rd in the standings since the 2015-16 season and failed to get into an expanded playoff field in the 2019-2020 season.
Many fans and members of our station understood Eichel's frustrations with the team and how his injury was handled in 2021. There were also plenty of fans that did not appreciate Eichel wanting out of town in the midst of a massive contract extension.
Fans knew the writing on the wall after the Ryan O'Reilly trade, and we braced for the worst as the Eichel saga was coming to its bitter end. Trading the best player in a deal rarely ends well for that team.
Fans turned to apathy, knowing another playoff-less season was on the horizon, knowing they would lose one of the more talented players to don the blue and gold. Plenty were bitter with team management, others were bitter with the captain.
Both sides would be at each other's throats about Eichel once more, just like in the 2014-15 season. The tank for Eichel and the trade of Eichel created some pretty big rifts within the fan base.
In one fell swoop, Eichel managed to bury any good faith by even some of Eichel's biggest defenders. We all saw who Eichel really was Thursday night, when it came to this fan base and this Sabres team.
Thanks for the closure, Jack. You made it pretty easy for all of us to finally get on the same side about you.
See you next year, Jack. You won't be missed.
