Winners and losers as the Jack Eichel Derby comes to an end

Greg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.

There’s something wholly appropriate about the Vegas Golden Knights having a trade announced at 4:30 a.m. local time in a city where high-stakes gambles still happen in the predawn hours.

Every blockbuster trade is a gamble. Assuming Jack Eichel comes through his artificial disk replacement surgery as a healthy star, the Golden Knights are betting that he’s the piece in their lineup that pushes them over the hump for a Stanley Cup championship. They’ve got some serious roster decisions ahead of them in adding his contract, so he better be worth it.

The Sabres are betting forward Alex Tuch, center Peyton Krebs, a top-10 protected 2022 first-round pick and a 2023 second-round pick help transition them into the next phase of the franchise, post-Eichel. And that turning the page on a captain who no longer wanted to steer this ship is for the betterment of the rest of the crew.

“We need to build this organization with people that are dying to be Buffalo Sabres,” GM Kevyn Adams said.

Who or what won the trade? Who lost it? A look at the fallout from the Eichel trade:

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