Watch: Vegas' Jack Eichel scores first career playoff goal vs. Jets
It took a while, but Jack Eichel now has a postseason goal.
In his eighth NHL season, Eichel finally lit the lamp in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, scoring for the Vegas Golden Knights Thursday during Game 2 of their first-round series with the Winnipeg Jets.
With the score tied 1-1 in the second period, Eichel camped out in front of the Jets' net, deflecting a point shot from defenseman Alex Pietrangelo past netminder Connor Hellebuyck.
Eichel snapped a personal playoff drought earlier this week, going pointless while finishing minus-3 in Vegas' Game 1 loss to the Jets.
It has been a long road for Eichel to gain entrance into the tournament for Lord Stanley's Cup. Selected second overall in the 2015 NHL Draft by the Buffalo Sabres, Eichel found himself on the outside looking in at the postseason over the first six seasons of his career.
Then, during the 2020-21 season, he suffered a serious neck injury, leading to a disagreement with the Sabres over the procedure he should undergo to fix the health concern. As the relationship between the two sides continued to deteriorate, the Sabres stripped Eichel of his captaincy ahead of the 2021-22 campaign before trading him to the Golden Knights that November.
The 26-year-old impressed in his first full season since 2019-20, as Eichel recorded 66 points (27 goals, 39 assists), scoring a career-high 25 even-strength goals over 67 regular season games.
Reaching the career milestone on Thursday has to be a weight lifted off Eichel's shoulders, but he undoubtedly hopes that it's only the first of many pucks he will put in the back of the net in the playoffs during his career.
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