from Ken Campbell of The Hockey News,
He's leading all Sabres scorers by 18 points, is in the midst of a 17-game point streak and has put the team on his back most nights. When it comes to value, few – if any – have been as valuable as Eichel this season.
On Tuesday night in Toronto, the present and future of American hockey was on full display and it was a wonderful spectacle to watch. Jack Eichel, the second overall pick in the 2015 draft, and Auston Matthews, the first overall pick one year later, went hammer-and-tong, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world and conducting their own anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better contest.
And Jack Eichel showed exactly why if the season were over today and the Sabres were in the playoffs, he and Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche would be the top two contenders for the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable players. Of course there are others in the mix, but here’s the thing. In Edmonton, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl have each other. The same goes in Boston where Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak feed off each other, along with their Hall of Fame-bound center Patrice Bergeron. But MacKinnon, because of injuries to teammates, and Eichel, because he has nobody around him to match his skills, have had to do things entirely on their own.
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