Rumor: Jack Eichel being linked to a Canadian team.

We have a very interesting development on the Jack Eichel front, one that could see the Buffalo Sabres captain headed to a team north of the border.

It has been one of the most poorly kept secrets in hockey that Eichel and the Sabres are headed towards a messy divorce and for many the expectation was that the Sabres would look to trade Eichel at the National Hockey League Entry Draft in order to maximize their return in terms of draft picks, and prospects moving forward. 

That seems significantly less likely to be the case now however given that the first few rounds of the draft have already come and gone, and as such so have the kind of draft picks the Sabres would have been seeking in a deal of this nature. No one knows for sure what will come next on the Eichel front, but over the weekend NHL insider Elliotte Friedman revealed that the Sabres have held significant talks with a Canadian franchise over the course of the last 24 hours.

"Buffalo is still looking for a definite prospect/draft pick based deal there," said Friedman. "I think they talked pretty heavily with Montreal yesterday. It was quiet last night."

The Montreal Canadiens have been a franchise that has been desperate for a true star level #1 centerman for as long as I can remember and so it comes as no surprise to learn that Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin has done his due diligence on Eichel and the Sabres. To learn that the two sides have been engaged "heavily" as Friedman would put is more of a surprise however and you have to wonder both what kind of return the Canadiens would have to provide to get Eichel away from the Sabres, as well as how the Habs would make this scenario work in terms of salary. Eichel comes in at a massive cap hit of $10 million per season and although the Canadiens do have some cap space to work with this summer most if not all of that will be used to replace a number of unrestricted free agents, like Corey Perry, Joel Armia, Tomas Tatar that will hit the open market on July 28th, and to sign restricted free agents like Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Artturi Lehkonen to new deals that will no doubt come with a sizeable raise in salary.