The Sabres Don’t Want To Retain Salary In A Jack Eichel Trade

The Jack Eichel saga in Buffalo continues.

While the Sabres are off to a surprising 2-0-0 start to the season, their former captain is watching from the sidelines waiting for the team to give him a change of scenery.

On Hockey Night in Canada’s edition of 32 Thoughts on Saturday, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that while the Sabres are trying to trade Eichel, they don’t want to retain any of his salary. Eichel has four more seasons after this one left on his deal with a $10,000,000 annual cap hit.

“What I understand is that one of the biggest hurdles right now to getting a Jack Eichel trade done is that the Sabres do not want to retain any salary. They’re willing to talk about taking contracts back to facilitate a deal but it’s still difficult with so many teams close to the cap and also Eichel still having four more years and $10,000,000 per season left on his salary. So I’m told that’s one of the biggest issues. Will the Sabres at all be willing to budge on that?

For example, one team I believe that made a call to Buffalo to see if there was a way to make it work was the Colorado Avalanche. But the Avalanche were told that they weren’t in a position where Buffalo was willing to take salary and I heard that talks just stopped right there.”

It’s easy to see why the Sabres would avoid retaining any of Eichel’s deal, given there are four years left on the contract and the team doesn’t want to be paying him to play for another team and muddying up their cap situation for that long.

The Sabres are going to have to find a team with some short-term, problematic contracts that they can take back in order to make a deal work.

There was a similar situation this offseason when the Canucks and Coyotes hooked up for the Oliver Ekman-Larsson deal. Vancouver took on all of OEL’s contract but Arizona took back Loui Eriksson, Jay Beagle, and Antoine Roussel, who combine to carry a $12,000,000 cap hit for one more season.

Circling back to Colorado, it’s difficult to see a deal getting done because the Avs don’t feature any ugly contracts they would want to send back to Buffalo as dumps to fit Eichel in. A deal would likely have to involve center Nazem Kadri, who has a $4,500,000 cap hit, but he’s a free agent at the end of the season and wouldn’t help Buffalo’s long-term building plans.