More details revealed on Flames’ serious offer turned down by Buffalo for Eichel

Before Jack Eichel was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights early on Thursday morning, there were reports that the Calgary Flames were making a play to land the star forward.

And they actually did, however, Pierre LeBrun revealed on last night’s Insider Trading on TSN that the Sabres turned down the offer from Calgary, preferring to send Eichel and a third round pick to Vegas in return for Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, a future first-round draft pick and a future second-rounder. But LeBrun talked about the Flames’ offer, and fans were reportedly wrong to think Matthew Tkachuk was ever part of the deal:

“Well one part that was certainly not true is that Matthew Tkachuk was never part of any offer from the Calgary Flames to the Buffalo Sabres. Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams himself said that to Buffalo reporters on this day. But that’s not to say that the Calgary Flames did not come close to getting Jack Eichel. In fact, at one point on Wednesday there were some in the Vegas organization that thought Eichel was headed to Calgary. Brad Treliving, the general manager of the Flames, has been on this for a long time. He has done his due diligence. They were one of the few teams like Vegas that was comfortable with trading for Eichel pre surgery.

“They didn’t get him but they certainly tried.”

While the Flames, just like the Golden Knights, agreed Eichel to have his preferred choice of surgery the artificial disk replacement, it seems like the asking price got too high for Calgary to stay ahead of Vegas.

After his surgery, Eichel is likely to be cleared to skate in six weeks, but it is a minimum of three months until he will be cleared for contact. That timeline would put his return until at least after the All-Star break, closer to February. But it could be longer : the surgery has never been done on an NHL player.

The Flames will focus back on the season, but who knows, they might be ready to pull the trigger on another trade after losing this one to the Golden Knights…