Penguins Looking to Get Jack Eichel?

   Note to readers: This article is pure speculation & guess work.

  I remember when the Vegas expansion happened, and I told everyone in my fantasy league that I thought they had drafted a really good team, moreover that they had a lot of underrated players, and I myself even drafted Riley Smith & William Karlsson as low picks in our fantasy league, and everyone laughed at me. I also remember them asking me if the Golden Knights would even get at least 70 points, I replied without hesitation that they would make it to the playoffs, which was received with more laughter as my ideas seemed preposterous, and it seemed I was talking cinderella story nonsense, and all knew better. Well no one was laughing when Riley Smith had 60 Points & William Karlsson popped off with 43(G) 35(A) for a whopping 78 Points, on top of that Vegas made it all the way to the Stanley Cup, alas loosing to the Capitals, but lets be real Ovechkin was destined to get his cup.

Well time for another one of those seemingly preposterous ideas! Now I’m not saying that all of my seemingly absurd ideas comes to fruition but I do seem to hit the nail on the head quite often it seems, so here’s another one to digest. 

Is Ron Hextall looking at Jack Eichel? The simple answer is no, right? How can we afford him? Who do we trade? How much do we trade? All very good points, which I’m going to get into.

Why do we want him?

  Besides the obvious that Jack Eichel has been a one man show over in Buffalo, he has some really good size and height, he’s 6’2 and 213 lbs. On top of having some nice size, he’s the kind of player that Hextall seems to like, a bigger forward, that’s good at skating, has playmaking ability and plays with a lot of passion, which is part of his frustration with Buffalo as their entire team just gives up with the mentality that it’s over before it has begun, where Eichel plays with heart and wants to turn everything around. But if he’s a Center where would we put him? This is another reason we would want him actually, being able to move Malkin around to a wing or to the first line is a nice ability to have, as well as having a star center for when Malkin inevitably gets injured during the season, we also have the ability to possibly play Eichel on the wing, he would not suffer playing next to Malkin or Crosby. 

How can we afford him? & what do we trade?

  So this is a big one, how do we afford him? Surely he’s out of our price range correct? Not necessarily, I’ve been watching Hextall’s trades closely and trying to figure out what he’s thinking here. He has two objectives that almost conflict with one another, making his job incredibly hard. Those two objectives would be, get a good team on the ice to try to win a cup within the next couple years before the big decline of Crosby and Malkin, but also build for the future, well how do you achieve both those goals? BIG trade, really one of the only ways if we’re being honest, you can’t just keep moving around small pieces and expect a cup to fall in your lap, clearly something isn’t working. Obviously defense and goaltending are lacking, so how do you get those pieces while simultaneously getting a stud player in Jack Eichel? Here it is, let’s try to break this down, so Jack Eichel is a whopping $10,000,000 smackers, phew that is a hefty amount of cash, so automatically you’re almost required to give up Jake Guentzel and his $6,000,000, but let’s be honest, Buffalo will need more than that for Eichel, so we add in Bryan Rust & his $3,500,000, with the roughly 7.4 million that Hextall cleared up in cap by sending off Jared McCann to the Leafs & exposing Brandon Tanev to Seattle, you now only need to pick up the remaining $500,000, which leaves you with $6,900,000 to play with for defense and goaltending. 

Would Buffalo trade with us?

  I don’t see why they wouldn’t, it seems Buffalo and Pittsburgh like to trade and talk often, we can throw in a draft pick to sweeten the deal, it may seem like we’re giving a lot, but Eichel helps us build for the future while giving us a better overall team now. So Buffalo gets Jake Guentzel who’s still only 26 years old, and is a proven 60/70 point player with still more upside, and they also get Bryan Rust who gives them more depth while adding some shooting power. If they manage to keep Reinhart, then your first line is now, Jake Guentzel (LW), Sam Reinhart (C), Bryan Rust (RW), and your second is now, Victor Olofsson (LW), Dylan Cozens (C), Jeff Skinner (RW), now that team sounds a lot better, as we know Eichel is trying to leave and it seems Buffalo is going to trade him away, and instead of making your team worse you’ve actually made it quite better, both teams win here I believe. 

Doesn’t this lose us depth?

  I don’t believe so, I believe that Hextall is indeed planning to call up players, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nathan Legare on the main roster this year, the young stud clearly deserves a roster spot at this point, I mean I thought he proved he could play two years ago, but alas he still played down a league. I think it’s almost certain that Radim Zohorna has earned his roster spot, he also seems like the kind of player that Hextall likes, big and fast, as he forces his way into the opposing teams zone. Hextall seems to be forcing Sully to change things up so far, Jeff Carter seems proof of that, but I could be wrong, they could be best buddies talking about how they’re going to pick toddler sized players and how they both want the team to be a bunch of feather dusting fairy’s as they laugh and smoke cigars, who knows, but I believe that not to be the the case.

Closing Thoughts

I don’t believe this trade to be out of the realm of possibility, but I definitely believe lord Hextall is planning something, it just really seems that way. Maybe I’m wrong and we do something dumb like get no goalie or blue line players, no Eichel and do something dumb like pick up a fossil like Alexander Ovechkin, just to have some weird dream team of aging players so we can play pretend that they’re performing as when they were rookies. I feel as though I shouldn’t of even said that, as I probably just jinxed us, oh well time will tell and I’m excited to see what happens. 

PS, for Ovechkin fans, I’m exaggerating about him being a fossil before you go on a tirade, he’s still a great player, though he is definitely headed for a drop off soon.