According to the Buffalo Sabres official social media accounts, center Jack Eichel is day-to-day after sustaining an injury during training. It doesn’t sound like it’s anything tremendously serious, but it will be worth keeping an eye on his status as camps open and the season is less than two weeks away.
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They write:
Jack Eichel will miss today’s practice due to an upper-body injury sustained in training. He is considered day-to-day. Linus Ullmark will miss today’s practice while he is quarantining due to an immigration issue. The team expects to have him on the ice in the coming days.
The Sabres need Eichel healthy and it’s largely expected that the production of Taylor Hall will be reliant on the two playing well as a tandem. Hall can produce points on his own, but the reason the Sabres went out and signed him was so that Hall and Eichel could lead the team’s offense as a one-two punch.
Eichel addressed the media during a video conference on Thursday and noted he was looking forward to this season and was optimistic about the Sabres shot at making the playoffs. In particular, he was pumped about the acquisitions of Taylor Hall and Eric Staal.
An Early Injury Could Mean Sabres Are Toast
On a poor Sabres team, Eichel has been better than a point-per-game player for the Sabres the past two seasons. In 2019-20, he scored 78 points in 68 games. The year prior, he had 82 points in 77 games.
He’s a huge part of their success and the team went out and tried to land one of the off-season’s biggest free agents just to make sure Eichel knew the team was giving it everything they could to make the playoffs.
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