7/25/21 | Elliotte Friedman said on the 31 Thoughts podcast, “We said the Rangers were the stealth team on it and someone called me and he said you are right about that, but you are probably about a week or two late. He said, from what he understood, the Rangers and Sabres were just not close on the package. The Sabres wanted the likes of Schneider or Lundkvist and the Rangers didn’t want to go there, they wanted some of their top young players who were already on the roster and the Rangers didn’t want to go there. Basically, if you were doing a Venn-diagram of what the Rangers were offering and the Sabres wanted, there was no intersect in the middle, like two different circles.”
7/23/21 | 11:15 AM: Darren Dreger was on WGR in Buffalo a few minutes ago and said the following about the Rangers and Jack Eichel:
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“This is a tough market to nail down. A good New York Rangers source, yesterday, thought that there is a slim chance that it was going to work with the Rangers. That is not to say it’s not going to be the New York Rangers, but again, that is where the process was yesterday and all that can change pretty swiftly with a phone call.”
Dreger continued, “but if you are looking at a four-piece package from the Rangers, I had a package thrown at me that included Lundkvist or Schneider, Kravtsov, Chytil, and a first-round pick. I mean, there is four elements and I threw that by the Rangers and they basically laughed as if that is too much. Is it? It might be, from New York’s standpoint, but is it too much from Buffalo’s standpoint to ask for that.”
Marty Biron said that he thought that the package would be a “bad return” for Eichel from a Sabres point of view.
Dreger added, “you don’t think that Rangers package is even close to what Buffalo would need, well the Rangers are likely looking at is too much, and ‘we’re not paying that.'”
Larry Brooks tweeted that Buffalo’s “demands” for Eichel remain “fantastical.”
Frank Seravalli said on his podcast that “I think the Rangers are the team that is on the odds on favorite to land Jack Eichel and I know they had been asking around to other teams, ‘hey, can we get inside the top-10, what is it gonna cost for your pick and it’s interesting because the Rangers are picking at #16 and it’s not all that unusual for a team wanting to get in the top-10, especially with the players being so closely grouped inside the top-10, but what is interesting is the Sabres are asking for another lottery-type pick and I think that if you see that go down on Friday, it’s probably a pretty good indication that something is up. The Rangers were asking around about that and I think that is the exact motivation, they are trying to get Jack Eichel, they want that extra pick, Buffalo has made it clear they want another high-end first round, they don’t want 27th overall, they want something in the top-10 that they can add to the #1 pick that they have.”