The first time Jack Eichel stepped onto the ice was on his fourth birthday.
His father, Bob, took him to the local ice rink in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, where a “Learn to Skate” program was being held halfway up the rink that day. On the other hand, a group of older children were in a more advanced Learn to Play class.
Bob ran out and encouraged young Jack to join him. After inching his way onto the slippery surface, Eichel caught a glimpse of the hockey action at the other end and slowly but surely made his way there.
“They told him to learn to skate before he played hockey, but he didn’t listen,” Bob Eichel recalled in a phone call to The Athletic. “He ran straight down and played with the older kids. it was crazy … Crazy.”
On this day 22 years ago, Jack Eichel began his ascent in ice hockey. After a long, tumultuous climb, he reached the pinnacle of the sport and became champion on Tuesday night in Las Vegas.
He ran up to Chandler Stephenson, took the Stanley Cup from him, took a big step and lifted him in the air while screaming with excitement. Eichel’s three-pointer evening helped the Golden Knights seal their championship season in stunningly dominant fashion as they defeated Florida 9-3 in Game 5 at T-Mobile Arena on Tuesday night.
“A lot of adversity, but coming here and being with these guys every day has really changed my attitude about a lot of things,” Eichel said after winning the trophy. “When you make a run like that, it’s hard to process what’s happening, but when that thing (the trophy) comes out of there, it’s a really special feeling.”
It caps the journey of the 26-year-old from North Chelmsford, Mass., a journey in which he completely turned the history of his hockey career on its head with a sensational, tough playoff run that propelled Vegas to the championship.
The first seven years of Eichel’s NHL career did not go as planned. Ranked #2 overall for the Buffalo Sabers in 2015, he entered the league as a teenager with the crushing burden of a franchise on his shoulders. There were many spectacular goals and moments in Buffalo, but also many losses, much criticism hit Eichel and a neck injury ended his run as Saber before the team even qualified for the playoffs.
Following his neck surgery – which came after a move to Vegas in November 2021 – many people in the hockey world wondered if he would ever be the same player again. Even if he could, would that lead to wins? It hadn’t gotten that far yet.
Since then, Eichel has answered all of these questions and proved untrue many of the criticisms made throughout his career. In his first postseason, he was a fixture of a tight-knit dressing room. Brilliant with and without the puck, he sacrificed his body, thrived in physical playoff hockey and won the ultimate hockey prize.
Every hockey player works their whole life to win the Stanley Cup. In the basement of the Eichel family home, 30 miles northwest of Boston, was a hockey net whose cord was blackened with rubber from the thousands of pucks being shot at it. A sheet of plastic covering the concrete floor served as the launch pad for what turned into an impressive snapshot.
“He would get up in the morning before school, do push-ups and sit-ups and shoot 100 pucks in the basement every day,” said Bob Eichel. “When he was six or seven years old, he wouldn’t go to his friends’ birthday parties if he had a big hockey game the next day.”
Eichel’s unique focus on hockey was obvious to anyone who knew him as a kid.
“I was standing in line for coffee a few years ago and a lady came up to me and said, ‘Are you Mr. Eichel?'” recalls Bob Eichel. “She told me, ‘I was Jack’s teacher in the fourth grade.’ You know what he told us when he was in fourth grade? He said he would play in the NHL. We all laughed.’”
All these years later, nothing has changed. He can practice early and stay late to work on his shot. He enjoyed the drive to the Cup with family and friends but never let up. He would join them for dinner, but only when there were two days between games because he didn’t want to break his pre-game eating and training routines.
“He doesn’t say much most days,” said Bob Eichel. “A few words here and there, but you can see the focus.”
Eichel brought his chiropractor and close friend Dr. Mark Lindsay at his home in Las Vegas for the playoff run. Lindsay has worked with many professional athletes over the years and helped Eichel with rehab after his neck surgery in North Carolina last year. He has been living with Eichel for two months to ensure his body is in the best possible shape for each playoff game. Eichel even booked him a room at the team hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to accompany him during the cup final.
It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. Acorn was a force in the postseason. He led the NHL with 26 points in 22 games, the third most points by a player in his first playoff run in NHL history. He danced across the ice with the puck on stick, pushing into dangerous areas to pave the way for goals out the back door for his teammates. Without the puck, he was just as persistent, chasing the puck carrier with a physical, efficient backcheck.
“I’m watching the Stanley Cup Finals and his backchecking ability is pretty impressive,” said Wild winger Marcus Foligno, who was Acorn’s teammate in his first two seasons in Buffalo. “This guy gets on his horse and comes back. He takes the puck and goes straight back north.
“He can pick up a puck at the top of circles in the defending zone and blow past a defender with his big stride. It’s scary because it’s a little deceptive. He is dominant.”
The outstanding performance in the playoffs may have surprised some, but not Foligno and those who have known Eichel the longest. While watching a playoff game, Bob Eichel received a text message from Chris Masters — who runs the Junior Bruins organization in Boston and has coached Eichel since he was 13 — saying, “I’m not surprised, he was his whole A winner for life.”
“The kid just always played well in big games,” Masters told The Athletic. “I knew whenever his team made the playoffs I would have been stunned if he hadn’t played well.”
Masters coached Eichel for two seasons from 2010-12 with the Junior Bruins. The two won a junior B national championship together in 2011 when Eichel was just 14 years old.
Eichel played well above his age group from the moment he stepped onto the ice as a four-year-old and wanted to play hockey with the older kids. By the time he hit eighth grade, all of his teammates started playing for their high school teams, and Acorn was too young.
The Eichels received an email from the Masters asking if he would like to play with the Junior Bruins. The program did not have an under-16 or under-18 team at the time, so the only option was a junior B team with players up to 20 years of age. Still, he believed that Eichel was ready.
Jack Eichel (second from top left) celebrates with his Junior Bruins teammates. (Courtesy of Chris Masters)
“Here’s little Jack Eichel, this little 13-year-old who came to us and played 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds at times,” Masters said. “There are certain kids, only two or three a year of birth, who are skilled enough from a hockey perspective but also physically strong enough to make that jump.”
His father was nervous from an early age and it took a long time to get used to. Eichel didn’t score his first goal with the Junior Bruins until six weeks later, just after his 14th birthday. As the season progressed, he figured things out. At halftime he was one of the team’s best players, scoring 15 goals and 36 points in 40 games.
By the time the national playoffs began, Eichel was three inches taller and a dominant force on the ice. College coaches asked Masters about Acorn but wondered if he had the drive to make it in the collegiate game.
“There was a coach, whose name I don’t want to mention, who said, ‘Does he work hard?’ “It just doesn’t look like he works hard at skating,” Masters recalled. “I laughed and told him it was because his step was so efficient. Even as a 14-year-old he was taking six or seven steps on the ice, but it doesn’t seem like he’s making any effort because the boy walks like a gazelle. He’s just graceful.”
This criticism followed Eichel into the NHL. When the Sabers didn’t win, he was often accused of not riding hard enough.
“It’s crazy to me,” Masters said. “He has such an efficient stride that it doesn’t seem like he’s working hard, but he is.”
At the 2011 national tournament, the Masters saw firsthand how Eichel could improve his game.
“The semi-finals go into overtime,” Masters recalled. “Jack smashes the puck past our blue defensive line, seems to take three or four steps and goes over the right wing and nobody can catch him. He fakes the shot, the keeper bites, he swings around the net and just plugs it in for an all around goal that sends us to the national championship.”
Jack Eichel, age 14, stretches his face just over the goaltender’s right shoulder on the left in this 2011 championship photo. (Courtesy of Chis Masters)
Masters followed every minute of Eichel’s run through the Stanley Cup playoffs that year from his home in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and recognized many of the same qualities that made him great as a teenager.
“One of the things that always strikes me about Jack is how high his balance threshold is,” he said. “Even under pressure, on the biggest stage in the world, the puck is often on the stick and something positive always happens. He just has a posture threshold that I think is among the best in the world.”
As a 14-year-old, Eichel won a national championship against players up to six years his senior. He represented his country on the US national development team and went on to win the Hobey Baker Award as an 18-year-old freshman at Boston University.
His family’s home in Massachusetts has entire rooms covered in hockey trophies. His father recalls letting Jack use his truck one summer after returning from college and finding trophies – including gear for his CCM All-American season – under the truck’s seats when he returned it that fall.
Winning is king for Eichel, and he did it a lot before he got into the NHL.
“From day one in Buffalo, he was a young man who got a lot of praise and came out with a certain swagger, but it wasn’t overbearing cockiness,” said Foligno, who was five when Eichel came to Buffalo to coach No .2 in the overall selection. “This guy loves to compete, he loves to win and he wants to be the best. That’s what you expect from your teammates.”
The thought that Eichel was some kind of villain during his time in Buffalo is ridiculous to Foligno. He described him as an outgoing, fun boy who was always at team dinners and events. But as the losses piled up, it weighed on Eichel.
“Everything that happened to Jack in Buffalo I think just came down to the competition that Jack hates to lose in and as a player I don’t find anything wrong with that,” Foligno said. “I think Jack’s comments at Buffalo conflicted at times because he loved everything about the Buffalo Sabers organization, the city and the fans. He just wanted to win.
“It hurts a lot when you lose because it becomes a pretty easy habit. You now have a little kid who is used to winning all the time and who comes into a room who knows how to lose. That was the biggest annoyance for him. Jack didn’t approve of that.”
After six frustrating years, three final placements and zero playoff games, Eichel and the Sabers parted ways. He disagreed with the organization about what type of surgery he should undergo to fix his neck and was eventually turned over to the Golden Knights.
His father believes he matured in Las Vegas, learning from veteran players like Alex Pietrangelo, Alec Martinez and Mark Stone, and coach Bruce Cassidy. He can see a noticeable difference in Eichel’s behavior after defeats.
Bob Eichel was visiting his son after a devastating overtime loss in Game 3 of the Cup Final in Florida but quickly saw a huge crowd of family members waiting for him and decided to get back on the bus.
“There are so many people there,” he recalls. “He doesn’t need to see me. He talks to me every day. But then he calls me and says, “Where are you?” I told him I was going to the bus because I was trying to keep you away from you. He says: “No, I’m fine.” We played a great game. We had a bad break and lost the game. I’m fine, don’t worry.’
“He lost a game in Buffalo in February and I couldn’t talk to him for a day. Now he’s here after one of the biggest games of his life and he’s greeting people afterwards.”
Eichel sat out months with a serious neck injury and was unable to do what he loves for most of his life. This is how Eichel gained a new perspective. He came back from the surgery with a heightened sense of appreciation. This combined with his undying competitiveness resulted in a more mature player who would weather the ups and downs of an NHL season and help his team win the Stanley Cup.
“I know how hard the kid has been working since he was seven,” Masters said. “It’s what he’s wanted all his life. I think it helps validate his reputation and him as a player.”
He has shown leadership qualities on the ice, such as coming back from a thunderous Matthew Tkachuk strike in game two of the cup final to score in his next shift. His post-game reaction of taking full responsibility for playing with his head down and making no excuses was as important in Cassidy’s eyes as his court to Jonathan Marchesault for the goal. He has also managed the Golden Knights with a strong work ethic in practice and comedic relief in the locker room.
“He’s a guy who’s constantly shooting pucks after practice,” Cassidy said. “He’s a very hard worker on the job and takes it very seriously. For a man his age, he sets a good example. And he came up with the Elvis wig. I think that’s a big deal for us in the dressing room to be honest. You must also have a little sense of humor or creativity. I think those things can go a long way over a long playoff run, so it’s good for him that he came up with that.”
Acorn isn’t a vocal leader in front of the group, but he bought an Elvis Presley wig and glittery sunglasses off Amazon this season for players to give out to each game’s top player. It became a post-game tradition that lasted.
The road to a championship has been as easy for those close to Acorn as it has been for him.
“It’s a lot of fun to be able to share this experience with my family and friends,” said Eichel. “For me, it was their dream to play in the playoffs too, so I think they’re enjoying it.”
His parents, Bob and Anne, are the main reason he’s here in the first place. The Masters raved about the basics they taught Acorn as a child that helped him carry him.
“They’re great people, but they’re also great hockey parents,” Masters said. “I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and have had too many conversations with parents about who their child will be playing with and where they will fit in. With the Eichels it was always: ‘Hey, thanks for that.’ the opportunity. Whatever the boy deserves, he will get.’
“Growing up, he was a superstar. By the time he was 12 or 13, everyone locally and probably across the country knew who he was, but there was no ego.”
All the hours the Eichels spent driving to the rink and sitting on freezing metal stands while Jack trained led to this run. Bob Eichel joked that he finally returned home for a day last week, mowed half his lawn and trimmed some bushes before jumping back on a plane. The Acorns have enjoyed dinner on the Las Vegas Strip and lunch on the beach in South Florida. Most importantly, they enjoyed watching their son succeed on the ice.
“It was so good,” said Bob Eichel. “It’s good for him. He needed that.”
On Tuesday evening, Eichel shared this moment with his father on the ice and lifted the trophy together.
“It’s a special moment,” said Jack Eichel. “You get suffocated when you see your family. They’re with you from the start, so you almost want to win it for them more than you do. You think of all the things you’ve been through and they are by your side every day. That means a lot.”
Acorn is a champion. He nailed it with a handful of spectacular targets and setups, but most of all he nailed it with exceptional detail. The parts of the game that were questioned by many early in his career were his greatest strengths in these playoffs.
He played winning hockey the whole time and played an incredible game of chess to finish. Eichel was tenacious on the precheck, incredible on the backcheck, and it all ended up walking around with the Stanley Cup high above his head.
In a single postseason, Eichel rewrote his story, which began with some calling him a player “you can’t win with” to a player who has proven he absolutely can.
(Photo by Jack Eichel: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)