Jack Eichel reaches stardom in another boring Sabres rebuilding year

It’s that time of the NHL season where a few fan bases start buying playoff tickets while the rest turn their attention to baseball or arts and crafts. Elimination is no fun. But it shouldn’t color your whole fandom with tears. Just most of it. Seventy percent of it.

This is the 30 percent: SB Nation NHL Silver Linings, where we send hockey’s eliminated teams into the offseason with five good things to remember from this season.

Maybe we expected too much, too soon from the rebuilding Buffalo Sabres.

They tanked hard in 2015 for a shot at drafting Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel. Buffalo slammed the “reset” button on its franchise so hard it needed to be replaced. A quick turnaround was never in the books.

But Buffalo spent a lot of dough on Kyle Okposo this offseason, so we got fooled. Instead, the Sabres quietly played out another mediocre season, got eliminated from playoff contention this week, and look set at getting another high draft pick.

But it wasn’t all bad. Or boring.

Even injuries couldn’t keep the 20-year-old from blossoming in the shadow of Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid.

While those two stole headlines with terrific starts, Eichel didn’t play until December. Since, only seven players have more than Eichel’s 53 points. The company is as elite as they come in hockey: Nicklas Backstrom, Patrick Kane, Brad Marchand, Nikita Kucherov, McDavid and Sidney Crosby.

So, yeah. Eichel has arrived.

Trade rumors swirled around Kane in the season’s opening months but quickly dissipated as he began to click with his Sabres teammates. Kane leads the Sabres in goals (he could eclipse the 30-goal mark for the first time in five years) and game-winning goals.

When you think of Kane’s season, you think of this goal:

An all-out, play hard at all costs goal. Not something people expected from Kane this year, but he’s ingrained himself into the fabric of the Sabres for the immediate future.

If you’re going to be bad, the last thing you want is a silent team just playing out the string.

As Buffalo struggled, players publicly called out the team for its effort over and over again. Goalie Robin Lehner said his teammates weren’t playing hard enough to earn their NHL place and clashed with coach Dan Bylsma over getting pulled. Eichel also aired his frustrations with the season publicly and honestly.

These seem like bad things, but we think they’re good. It’s not a sign of a locker room unraveling; it’s a sign of a young locker room growing into roles and expectations. That can only bode well for the future.

When Buffalo drafted the Finnish defender eighth overall in 2013, the Sabres hoped he would become a No. 1, shut-down blue liner. If Ristolainen isn’t there already, he’s damn close.

Ristolainen averages 29.9 shifts per game, the 10th most in the NHL for a defenseman. Only four defensemen (Dustin Byfuglien, Drew Doughty, Ryan Suter, and Erik Karlsson) average more than Ristolainen’s 26 minutes a night. And he’s pretty effective out there: 44 points makes him a power-play threat. He’s still developing and could work on his own end play more, but he’s certainly a bright spot.

Three of their 2016 picks enjoyed solid-to-great seasons away from the Sabres. Cliff Pu looks like a second-round steal after an 86-point season with the OHL’s London Knights. Rasmus Asplund looked terrific at the World Juniors and abroad in Sweden.

Defensemen like Casey Fitzgerald (Boston College) and Brendan Guhle (WHL) progressed nicely and should turn pro next season.

The only downside is that Alexander Nylander, their eighth overall pick last summer, struggled mightily in his first AHL season. But that’s not unheard of for AHL teenagers. There’s enough hope on the horizon from the Buffalo farm this year to keep in mind as the Sabres continue their rebuild.