Asking Price for Jack Eichel

Trading for a player like Jack Eichel is a bad idea for any team. The truck-load of assets that a team would have to give up to acquire him would be devastating to a club's future. As Edmonton and Buffalo have both demonstrated over the last 5 years, a single player can't fix your problems. Plus, you're one injury away from destroying your franchise for the better part of a decade. That's too much of a risk to take.

If you can get lucky and win the lottery in a year when there's a generational player available, then hooray for you. That's the only reasonable way to acquire a player like McDavid or Eichel in their prime.

For example, the asking price you put in LA's situation would be:

Alex Turcotte
Anze Kopitar
2020 Top 7 overall pick (one of Lafreniere, Byfield, Stutzle, Raymond, Drysdale, Perfetti, Rossi)
2021 Top 15ish overall pick (who knows what that could be)

That's just insane.

A decent young 45+ point producing forward + a decent 1st pair defense man + a top 10 1st round pick + a 2021 first pick + a prospect (if froward 2-3 line potential - if defense 1st-2nd pair potential)

Right but that's not really how this goes...

-Eichel's only being traded if he demands a trade
-If he demands a trade, he's going to have 1-3 teams he specifically wants to be traded to
-At that point, Buffalo pretty much has no leverage. Whatever "asking" price there was you can chop off about 25-50%
-Sabres will probably trade him at that point because if you don't
a) Eichel will probably sit out (and it's not like he can't afford to)
b) Eichel will bad-mouth the Pegula's publicly to the point where they'll ship him out just so he can stop.
c) Other players are going to want to go to Buffalo less than they already do (which is pretty low)

It's going to make signing UFA's and signing NCAA players very hard in the future if you put up too much of a fight.

So if your ask is
1) Top Prospect
2) Top Pair/Top Line player
3) Top 15 Draft pick
4) 1st Rounder

What you could reasonably expect is
1) Top Prospect
2) Solid Young Top 6/Top 4 Player
3) A late 1st
4) Either another late 1st/early 2nd or a solid prospect or young player.

And that's basically what Gretzky got minus the cash.

Flames:

Pelletier
Tkachuk OR Gaudreau
2020 1st (around 15th depending on play in)
2021 1st

feel like the package would have to be close to the one from the Eric Lindros trade.