Jack Eichel knows his return to Buffalo will be "awkward" and says he doesn't know how Sabres fans will react -- though he hopes they focus on some positives.
"I think about my time in Buffalo, it obviously ended a little bit messy," Eichel, the former Sabres captain, told ESPN ahead of his first game in Buffalo (7 p.m. ET Thursday, ESPN+) since getting traded to the Vegas Golden Knights in November. "But I hope [fans] can look past some of the things that happened maybe in the last year and think about the previous five and a half, six years that I was there and everything that I tried to do for the community, everything that I feel like I put forth on the ice as a hockey player, and know I just tried to do as much as I could for the city.