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I Like Eich!

And so should you!

By Zach Laing
Zach Laing

Boston Terriers Center and future NHL star Jack Eichel is in the running for, and should win the Hobey Baker award which is given to the top Men's NCAA player annually since 1981.

The Terriers campaign to promote Jack Eichel is based off of Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower's 1952 presidential election where his slogan was "I Like Ike."

Eisenhower even had Walt Disney Studios do an animation for him.

Ryan Lambert from Puck Daddy wrote back in December that he feels Eichel is the runaway Hobey Baker winner:

For the first time in forever, the best player in the country is an out-and-out freshman, with Jack Eichel looking for all the world like he's going to lead the nation in scoring pretty much straight across the season from front to back. He's so much better than everyone I've seen play this year — and I've been to 25 games or so live — that I don't think you can even make an argument that someone else should be in the Hobey Baker conversation. You see 1.69 points per game with some amount of frequency, but never from freshmen, and certainly never from 18-year-olds. Boston University right now looks like one of the best teams in the country (they're ranked No. 1, at any rate) and with apologies to Matt O'Connor, he's more or less the only reason why.

Currently, the only freshman to win the Hobey Baker was Paul Kariya in 1993 while a member of the Maine Bears where he scored a staggering 100 points in only 39 games.

Eichel finished the season leading all Div 1 NCAA players with 61 points in 34 games. He was able to increase his PPG total from 1.69 as Lambert noted above to 1.79. While they aren't Kariya numbers, they are more than respectable in a league that rarely sees freshmen have such success. According to the NCAA, one in 125, or about .8%, of NCAA senior male ice hockey players will get drafted by a NHL team.

There have only been seven players drafted out of the NCAA that went in the first round of the NHL entry draft, and all seven of them have been drafted in the last three years. Eichel has a chance to be the highest drafted player out of the NCAA after Dylan Larkin was selected 15th overall by the Detroit Red Wings last year.

If he falls in our lap...

Then it will be interesting to see what happens as the Oilers have suddenly got some depth at center, something that our organization has lacked. Currently, the Oilers have six players who could all realistically make the roster next year: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Derek Roy, Anton Lander, Boyd Gordon, Leon Draisaitl and Bogdan Yakimov.

The addition of another center in Jack Eichel, or Connor McDavid should we win the lottery, could force Craig MacTavish into dealing a player like Boyd Gordon if managements feel that there are better candidates to fill the role he plays.

Zach likes Eich!

Man your signs! We're hitting the streets to get Eichel to Edmonton!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ILikeEich?src=hash">#ILikeEich</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Eichel2Edmonton?src=hash">#Eichel2Edmonton</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Jack_Eichel11">@Jack_Eichel11</a> <a href="http://t.co/MsQe4DR2z3">pic.twitter.com/MsQe4DR2z3</a></p>&mdash; zach (@Loweded) <a href="https://twitter.com/Loweded/status/576192914881011712">March 13, 2015</a></blockquote>

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