Injured Buffalo Sabres captain Jack Eichel has fired his longtime agent, Peter Fish, and hired Pat Brisson to represent him, according to reports.
The news, first reported by Sportsnet’s Elliott Friedman, comes less than a month before NHL training camps are scheduled to open. Right now, the Sabres and Eichel, who wants to be traded, are at a standstill over how to treat the herniated disc in his neck.
Eichel wants to undergo artificial disc replacement, a surgery that has never been performed on an NHL player. The Sabres, meanwhile, want the star center to have fusion surgery.
The NHL’s collective bargaining agreement states players must follow the recommendation of team doctors.
Of course, by firing Fish, Eichel likely wants to spark some action. Brisson, the co-head of the Creative Artists Agency’s hockey division in Los Angeles, has 52 other NHL clients, according to Puckpedia.com, including some of the game’s biggest stars and top young players.
Cole Caufield, Sidney Crosby, Claude Giroux, Jack Hughes, Quinn Hughes, Patrick Kane, Anze Kopitar, Nathan MacKinnon, Elias Pettersson, John Tavares and Jonathan Toews are all represented by Brisson. Sabres forwards John Hayden and Kyle Okposo and Williamsville native Justin Bailey are also Brisson clients.
Fish, a Boston native like Eichel, had represented the 24-year-old since he turned pro in 2015. On July 30, Fish and Peter Donatelli, another agent at Global Hockey Consultants Inc., issued a late-night statement in which they wrote the Sabres are preventing Eichel from playing by refusing to let him undergo artificial disc replacement surgery.
