Jack Eichel, as all hockey fans know, is the brilliant sharpshooter that the hockey gods labeled a “generational player” when he joined the professional ranks (Buffalo Sabres) in 2015.
When he was 15 years old Eichel was a member of the USA Olympic Hockey team. When he was a freshman at Boston University he:
- Won college hockey’s Hobey Baker Award—just the 2nd time a college freshman did that in all of recorded history—or at least since hockey was invented.
- Led the nation in college hockey scoring, as a freshman.
- Was Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, member of the All-Rookie Team, and MVP of the conference tournament.
He went professional before he became a BU sophomore.
With the Sabres, Eichel was even more incredible.
- Youngest player in Sabres’ history to score a goal in his first game.
- Top Sabres’ scorer in his rookie year—24 goals, 56 points in 81 games.
- Missed most of his 2nd season due to a high ankle sprain, but still finished the year with 24 goals and 33 assists in just 61 games.
Between 2015 and 2020, Eichel was the Sabres’ most valuable player—a literal scoring machine. In 2017, he signed an eight-year, $10 million PER year contract.
In 2020 Eichel set a franchise record for goals scored in overtime—indeed, Eichel holds the franchise record for most regular-season overtime goals.
Being such a scoring threat, the thugs and mugs of professional hockey targeted Eichel relentlessly.
Battle Royale Erupts
In a March 2021 game with the New York Islanders, Eichel suffered a herniated cervical disc. The team doctor said he’d miss 7-10 days. In fact, he didn’t return at all. Without Eichel, the Sabres lost 18 games straight.
Four days after that game with the Islanders, Eichel went to an independent specialist to learn how severe his injury was. It certainly felt bad. The specialist told him he needed an artificial total disc. Not a fusion.
Many well-known golfers have successfully returned to the PGA tour after being treated with total disc arthroplasty.
But golf ain’t hockey.
On March 13, 2021, Sabres’ coach Ralph Krueger announced that Eichel would remain out for the “foreseeable future.” One month later, Krueger said Eichel would be out for the season. And Eichel’s treatment? More rehab. Any question of surgery, said the coach, was delayed indefinitely.
The doctors kept saying he needed surgery. However, under the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement, neither the doctors nor Eichel had final authority over his treatment. Only the Buffalo Sabres organization.
In constant pain, Eichel demanded surgery, specifically total disc arthroplasty.
“I’d be lying to say that things have moved smoothly since my injury,” Eichel said. “There’s been a bit of a disconnect between myself and the organization. It’s been tough at times. The most important thing now is to try to get healthy, figure out a way to be available to play hockey next year, wherever that might be.”
On July 30, Eichel’s lawyers threw down the gauntlet saying, in effect, give Eichel what he wants, or he’s gone. Peter Fish and Peter Donatelli, Eichel’s lawyers, said Buffalo’s reluctance to allow Eichel his desired surgery is “stopping Jack from playing in the NHL and it is not working.”
Six whole months since his injury, with physicians for BOTH the Sabres and Eichel saying the young man needed surgery, Eichel reported for his pre-season physical. He failed. The team stripped him of his captaincy and put him on injured reserve.
Eichel made his final, desperate plea for total disc arthroplasty to the Sabres in mid-October 2021.
It landed on deaf ears.
Sabres Trade Eichel to Las Vegas Golden Knights
On November 4, 2021, Eichel was traded, along with a third-round draft pick, to the Las Vegas hockey team—the Golden Knights.
The Knights agreed to pay for Eichel’s total disc arthroplasty.
Could a total disc replacement stand up to the pounding and aggressive checking in professional hockey?
No NHL player had ever been treated with a total disc arthroplasty. And, truth be told, the Sabres also were hesitant to risk Eichel’s trade value—what if the surgery failed?
Eichel’s first game back after total disc surgery was on February 16, 2022. He played 18 minutes—and did not score a goal. His first post-surgery goal came on February 20 in a 4–1 victory over the San Jose Sharks. Eichel finished his post-surgery season with 12 goals and 10 assists in 33 games—so-so.
Then Came the 2022-2023 Season
In the first 23 games of 2023, Eichel scored 26 points, a career-high and led the Golden Knights to first place in the Pacific Division. Against his former team, Buffalo, he scored a hat trick while also managing an assist and led the Golden Knights to a 7–4 victory.
Eichel finished 2023 with 27 goals and 39 assists in 67 games. Superstar stats.
In the 2023 playoffs—Eichel’s first since becoming a professional hockey player eight years ago—he led the Knights to win the first series of games. In the 2nd round, Eichel and the Knights defeated the Oilers in six games. The Knights were on a roll and moved through their next opponent, the Dallas Stars, in six games. Next to fall before the Eichel led Golden Knights were the Florida Panthers.
For the first time ever, both the Golden Knights and Jack Eichel, 26 years old, were in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
In those playoffs, Eichel led the league in postseason scoring with 26 points, the third-most for any NHL player in their first playoffs. He finished second in voting for the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP, behind linemate Jonathan Marchessault.
The Buffalo Sabres ended their 2023 season in 5th place in the Atlantic division, missing the playoffs yet again.
Eichel and the Golden Knights? They won the whole thing. The Stanley Cup.
But not before Eichel endured a thunderbolt of a hit.
In the final game, of the 2023 Stanley Cup championship series.
His head down, the puck in his stick, speeding to the goal, Eichel crashed into Matthew Tkachut’s shoulder which not only stopped Eichel cold, but laid him flat on the ice and sent his helmet skittering across the rink.
It was a thunderous open ice hit.
Eichel picked himself up, held his shoulder, and went into the locker room to recover. Several minutes later, he returned to the ice. And scored his second goal of the game to rout the Panthers, winning 4 out of 5 games, and take-home hockey’s fabled Stanley Cup.
Jack Eichel’s Surgery Becomes the ‘Tommy John Surgery’ of Hockey
Among professional hockey players, total disc arthroplasty is now known as Jack Eichel’s surgery and is taking on the kind of mythical status that, in baseball, Tommy John surgery has.
The major league pitcher, Tommy John, famously had ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) surgery by Dr. Frank Jobe in 1974 that was so successful, it revived and extended his career. Since then, hundreds of major league pitchers also benefited significantly from “Tommy John” surgery.
Now, an increasing number of hockey players, who’ve endured years of tingling and numbness and outright pain as a result of severe herniation or degenerative disc disease, are asking for the “Jack Eichel Surgery.”
“A year ago nobody had had it, and now all of a sudden, three guys have had it,” said Eichel, “It’s a more common injury than you think and it’s a good way to resolve that injury, so I’m happy that guys had the opportunity to do it.”
Chicago forward Tyler Johnson had a total disc replacement in December 2022, and Philadelphia’s Joel Farabee had it in June 2023.
And, of course, the best way to cap off this Hollywood ending is to recognize the great surgeon, Harvard undergrad, Columbia and University of Miami trained, superstar in his own field, Chad Prusmack, M.D. of the Rocky Mountain Spine Clinic in Denver, who made sure Eichel got the right surgery, for the right indication and executed like the top rank professional he is.
