The Jack Eichel saga in Buffalo has been quite the soap opera. But nothing in that saga was as odious and contentious as when the Sabres announced they were stripping their franchise player of his captaincy.
"From our perspective and my perspective, I feel the captain is the heartbeat of your team," GM Kevyn Adams said. "And we're in a situation, from where we were in the past and where we are now, that we felt that we needed to address that."
This was the biggest point of demarcation between Eichel and his team.