So what do the numbers look like when a team finishes below 55 points for a second year in a row?

For-Against (%)	Goals	Expected Goals	Shots on Goal	Shot Attempts	SH%	SV%	PDO
All Situations	153-269 (36.26)	165.23-250.72 (39.72)	1984-2921 (40.45)	3446-5629 (37.97)	7.71%	.908	0.985
5-on-5	110-177 (38.33)	112.74-175.07 (39.17)	1536-2306 (39.98)	2694-4494 (37.53)	7.16	.923	0.995

13-14 to 14-15 drop offs (xGAR from Evolving-Hockey)

Not a perfect science, but there were definitive drop offs atop the offense. At least Moulson’s play driving did improve a bit.

	2013-14 GP	2013-14 PTS	2013-14 xGAR	2014-15 GP	2014-15 PTS	2014-15 xGAR
Matt Moulson	44	11G 18A 29 PTS	1.5	77	13G 28A 41 PTS	4.5
Brian Gionta	81	18G 22A 40 PTS	4.6	69	13G 22A 35 PTS	-2.2
Cody Hodgson	72	20G 24A 44 PTS	0.8	78	6G 7A 13 PTS	-1.8

Some improved their production, albeit not substantially.

	2013-14 GP	2013-14 PTS	2013-14 xGAR	2014-15 GP	2014-15 PTS	2014-15 xGAR
Tyler Ennis	80	21G 22A 43 PTS	4.7	78	20G 26A 46 PTS	6.1
Zemgus Girgensons	70	8G 14A 22 PTS	6.3	61	15G 15A 30 PTS	2.1
Marcus Foligno	74	7G 12A 19 PTS	0.9	57	8G 12A 20 PTS	4.1

But when you have 0 players with 30 goals and only 4 with at least 10, those improvements matched the 54 point output of the team.

It’s also not a great sign when two of your consistent minute-getting defensemen were never NHL regulars again after 2014-15.

Andrej Meszaros went overseas to the KHL in his Age 30 season and played 7 total seasons in Europe before retiring in 2022.

Andre Benoit played 2 games in 2016 for the St. Louis Blues (72 in the AHL for the Chicago Wolves. After a 52 game season in Sweden, he came back to North America for 50 games in the AHL between Cleveland and Bridgeport in 2017-18.

Two More Honorable Mentions

Two other guys who never played in the NHL again were Cody McCormick and Patrick Kaleta, both of whom had their careers cut short by injury. While McCormick was having a bounce-back 2014-15 season defensively, blood clots that spread to his lungs forced his career to end after his Age 31 season.

After Kaleta’s weird 2013-14 season where he was suspended early into the year, was waived, and then tore his ACL, his 2014 season started with a puck to the face in the preseason. Returning in November, he eventually got injured again in February before returning for The Big Game against the Coyotes. In April, he got to wear the ‘A’ on his jersey for the first time in his career. In the 2015 offseason, he would sign an AHL deal with the Amerks and play 26 more pro games before retiring at year’s end. Matt Ellis joined him in playing one more year for the Amerks after his final season with the Sabres in 2014-15.

Locker Cleanout and Ted fired

The day after the season ended, Tim Murray relieved Ted Nolan of his duties only a single season into the extension he signed in spring 2014.

We both said it was too bad it didn’t work out. Is it just chemistry? Maybe it’s just chemistry. Maybe it’s two different personalities. You need chemistry on the ice, and you need chemistry off the ice. You have to find a perfect fit to be really successful, and maybe it just wasn’t a perfect fit.

I know this isn’t a popular thing. To me it’s about getting better. I feel this was an opportunity maybe for us to improve and keep the improvement going.

–Tim Murray

At locker cleanout, the players talked about needing to move forward. For Nikita Zadorov, he spoke of how he was going to leave his maturity lapses from the season in the past after Murray called on him to grow up in his end of season remarks.

Z has a ways to go in [maturing], and he knows that. A big part of our interview and talk was me putting the onus of him to grow up, to get better, to get fitter, to become a man. We’ll see how that goes…When you do certain things, your teammates lose respect for you, when you do certain things your coaching staff may lose respect for you. Young players are going to make mistakes, so it’s how you make those mistakes.

– Tim Murray

It was tough. I made a couple mistakes this year off the ice, and it’s all maturity. I’m not going to make them anymore.

– Nikita Zadorov

Both quotes from April 15, 2015 edition of The Buffalo News

While we’d find out in a matter of months, Zadorov’s time with the Sabres was over. But the theme of being reminded what it means to be professional was going to still be the theme of the summer for those who did stick around.

Our job is not to play for the future and play for the development of players. It’s to compete every night and try to get two points every night. I think along the way this year, we forgot about that. We lost that idea of what being a professional athlete is supposed to be.

It’s not just about showing up, putting your time in, punching the clock. There’s work. I don’t necessarily mean that’s just in the games. That’s preparing before practice. That’s watching your clips, talking to coaches, trying to develop, trying to find ways to be better, trying to find answers to solutions.

It’s a big offseason for everyone on this team. We all have to take a look in the mirror and understand that what happened this year isn’t acceptable, and we better be willing to put the time in and the effort in to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

We’re not going to go through this again. The way things happened, we won’t accept it as players. I’m sure the coaches won’t accept it, management, everybody. We need to change the way the culture is here.

– Josh Gorges

Lottery sadness

The following Saturday was the big day. While there was an 80% chance the Sabres would be picking second in the 2015 NHL draft, and that was far from a consolation prize, Bill Daly turned over the wrong team’s logo on the magical gold card. At least if you ask Tim Murray, as for the first time in North American pro sports since the Rochester/Cincinnati Royals from 1956-1960, a team (the Edmonton Oilers) was going to draft first overall for the fourth time in six years.

If you can pick 1 or 2, you’re going to choose 1. If you’re going to make a trade and they offer you the best defenseman in the league or the second-best defenseman in the league, you’re going to want the best. Anytime you can get 1 vs 2 in any walk of life, you’re going to want No. 1. But we came here with the expectation we’d probably be picking No. 2 and we’re going to deal with it. There’s no issue there.

It’s not the disappointment in the player. It’s just the process for me. It would be fine if they phoned me and told me you didn’t win. But this is what they do. Thankfully it’s a short drive from Buffalo. I’d hate like hell to be flying across the country to take part in it. It’s part of what our league does and it’s created a lot of buzz. So I don’t want to be a buzzkill on this.

I feel for our fans. I mean, we went through a tough year, and I think that they were extremely excited about Connor, certainly because he plays in Erie.

– Tim Murray

Where to from here

Now over a year removed from the awkward departure of Pat LaFontaine, Tim Murray set out to add a new coach and some new players to his roster with the goal of providing Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart with teammates who could help them compete in their first season in the NHL.

Whether they liked it or not, a lot of the internal conversation about roster building going forward was going to be based around what was sustainable going forward or what was just a product of the environment. For example, the blue line:

But for now, I think we need a break on drought history. The reigning Atlantic Division champions start training camp very soon.