Jack Eichel Scored in Buffalo Again as Vegas Closed Its Road Trip 3-0-1

BUFFALO

The boos are part of the furniture now. Five years after the trade, KeyBank Center still greets Jack Eichel like he left last week, and Sunday afternoon he answered the way he tends to in this building — with a goal, in a 4–1 Vegas win that closed the Golden Knights' four-game road trip unbeaten in regulation.

Buffalo owned the puck early and had nothing to show for it. The Sabres outshot Vegas 29–26 across the afternoon and spent long stretches of a scoreless first period in the attacking end, but Adin Hill stopped everything in front of a defense that finished with 23 blocked shots. Buffalo's power play, given three chances, never cashed in. It ended up doing worse than nothing.

The opening goal came off that power play, and off Buffalo's best player. Vegas was a man down midway through the second when Tage Thompson tried a pass at the blue line. Mitch Marner got his stick on it and was gone — a breakaway he carried to the top of the crease before slowing and sliding the puck past Colten Ellis's left skate at 12:17. Unassisted. Shorthanded.

Eighty-six seconds later came the goal the afternoon had been building toward. Ivan Barbashev pressured Owen Power behind the Buffalo net, took the puck off him, walked it out front and fed Eichel, who snapped a quick wrist shot past Ellis at 13:43 for his eighth goal of the season. The boos rolled down right on schedule.

Buffalo drafted Eichel second overall in 2015 and made him the face of a rebuild that never arrived. The end came over his neck — a herniated disk, a replacement surgery Eichel wanted and the Sabres would not approve, and a standoff that ran for months before the November 2021 trade to Vegas. Time has not cooled any of it. He was held pointless on his first trip back to this building, then scored a hat trick in it on his second, arms spread wide to the crowd after every goal. Sunday's goal was his seventh in eight career games against the Sabres, alongside three assists, and the player whose giveaway started the scoring is the center Buffalo has leaned on ever since Eichel left.

The Sabres did make a game of it once. Early in the third, Beck Malenstyn poked the puck past Hill in a netfront scramble at 4:26 — his first goal of the season, set up by Tyson Kozak and Mattias Samuelsson — and at 2–1 KeyBank Center had something to shout about.

The shouting lasted 77 seconds. Hertl collected Marner's backhand feed inside the blue line, went around Power — stripped behind his own net on the Eichel goal, beaten in open ice on this one — and lifted a wrist shot over Ellis's right shoulder at 5:43. Hertl scored again at 10:00, taking Barbashev's pass as he streaked up the middle and beating Ellis over the glove from the slot. Two goals in the third, his eighth and ninth of the season, and the matinee was over as a contest.

Hill's final line explains the score better than the shot count does. He stopped 28 of the 29 shots he faced, a .966 save percentage, and Buffalo's only goal came out of a scramble in his crease. Ellis stopped 22 of 26 at the other end. Marner's two points carried a milestone home with them: he had come into the day two points short of 100 as a Golden Knight, and the shorthanded goal plus the assist on Hertl's first goal got him there exactly. Shea Theodore ran the Vegas blue line at 24:18, a game high, and Brayden McNabb blocked five shots and finished plus-3, the same mark as Barbashev and Theodore.

The win was Vegas's third straight. It closed the road trip at 3-0-1 — seven of a possible eight points — moved the Knights to 12-5-2, and counted as the 413th win in franchise history, evening their all-time record against Buffalo at 8-8-1. Buffalo, which came in having won four of its last five, falls to 8-6-3 and has lost two of its last three — and this one lands against its own recent history: the Sabres had beaten Vegas three straight times, both meetings last season included, and had gone 16-2-1 against Pacific Division teams since the start of last season.

Both teams are back at it Wednesday. Vegas flies home to open a five-game homestand against Utah. Buffalo stays at KeyBank to close a four-game homestand against Tampa Bay — one more night in the building where the Eichel trade still hangs over everything, for a team still looking for the win over him that keeps not coming.

Every goal from this one lives on the game's Game Center page.