It’s the evening of April 18, 2017. The light from the television illuminates Tim Murray’s beleaguered face beyond a thin haze of smoke. He takes another drag from a Marlboro red while feverishly compressing the buttons on his Xbox controller. The smell of tobacco and Macallan fills the air.

Suddenly, the phone rings. Murray pauses his game. He takes a long sip of scotch, squinted eyes peering over his glass at the chiming handset. On the third ring, he finally picks up.

“Tim, it’s Terry Pegula. We need you to come into the office first thing tomorrow morning.”

Murray feels despair, but only briefly. The Buffalo Sabres’ owner continues to speak.

“We want to sit down and get a gameplan together for the offseason. We’re giving this group one more year to get us to the playoffs. See you in the morning.”

Murray places the phone down, staring blankly through his notoriously thick spectacles. What Pegula didn’t realize is that with those few sentences, he released a version of Murray that the NHL deserved, but perhaps wasn’t prepared for. A feral, dangerous man with one more chance to make his lifelong vision a reality.

After taking a moment to gaze into the abyss, he resumed his game, muttering five familiar words – “Time to slap some peepees.”

EXERCISE BACKGROUND, METHODOLOGY

The premise of this series is simple – What if the Buffalo Sabres hadn’t fired Murray following the 2016-17 season? It’s a fun question to ponder, but a logical person might inquire as to why I would willingly subject myself to such an open-ended exercise.

Well, the answer is that I left my fate in the hands of a very depraved and chaotic reader base (whom I love). In an absolute landslide, this idea won 72-percent of the votes for the first ever “Reader’s Choice” topic at Expected Buffalo.

Alright so I picked my 3 favorites from yesterday’s suggestions. Here are the options for the “Readers Choice” piece. Poll below:

A – Murray vs Botterill – Who was worse at applying analytics?

B – All-Analytics Olympic Rosters

C – A Fictional Work – If Murray was never fired

— Chad’s Altar Boy (@xBuffaloAnth) August 18, 2021

There are a lot of ways to approach a fictional re-writing of history such as this. After giving it some thought, I decided to attack it in a similar manner to which we conduct our annual mock offseason on the Expected Buffalo Podcast. Basically, we walk through an entire offseason worth of work including RFA extensions, the NHL Draft, unrestricted free agency, and of course, trades.

The main difference here is that, instead of doing what I would have personally done (as an analytics-focused person) in this situation, I will do my best to prognosticate a roster that Murray himself would have assembled that summer. In order to accomplish that, I will need to analyze his past player acquisition tendencies and establish a framework to determine which players and/or assets he might have realistically targeted in the 2017 offseason.

That analysis will take place in tandem with determining team needs based on the existing roster. So, without further delay, let’s roll up our sleeves and dive in.

The Existing Depth Chart

While the list of players from the Murray era is still pretty fresh in the minds of Sabres fans, I started by re-familiarizing myself with the players both under contract, and those set to expire. Due to the fact that there was no way to acquire a visual of the Sabres’ cap situation prior to the 2017 Expansion Draft (Vegas Golden Knights), I created one myself.

As illustrated above, Murray would have gone into the summer of 2017 with about $26.5 million in salary cap space to work with and just 14 NHL players under contract. In a normal offseason, filling that many spaces would be a sizeable task. In a “do-or-die” scenario for Murray, that amount of work can appear insurmountable.

Looking at the situation a bit closer, filling the equivalent of eight NHL roster spots is somewhat straight-forward in this context. There isn’t a single expiring UFA on the list whom Murray would have had to worry about extending prior to July 1. While there are several RFA roster players on the list, none of them are bonafide top-six assets, which obviously simplifies things even further.

The most critical piece to the offseason would have been replacing the expiring UFA’s with competent veteran assets. With the bottom of the roster already solidified with young, cost-effective assets, Murray would need to add talent up top. Given what was a pretty lackluster UFA pool that summer, he’d have needed to get creative on the open market, and via trade.

ESTABLISHING ROSTER PRIORITIES

In order of severity of need, the Murray’s shopping list would have probably resembled something similar to the following:

1. Top-Four Left-Side Defenseman
2. Top-Four Right-Side Defenseman
3. Third-Line Center
4. Top-Six Winger
5. Rotational/ 1B Netminder

It’s pretty apparent that after watching his defensive group struggle for a second-straight year, Murray would have prioritized the blue line. With Cody Franson and Dmitry Kulikov set to hit the open market (after somewhat frustrating stints in blue-and-gold), someone will need to take their places. Given the fact that Brendan Guhle and Casey Nelson were the only existing reserves in the system, additions from outside the organization would have been unavoidable.

With just three centermen under contract (one of them being Zemgus Girgensons), the need for a third-line pivot also stands out.  From there, the rest of the needs represent varying degrees of luxury.

At the time, the Sabres had several high-priced under-performers on the wing. The financial commitment to that group was certainly there, but the execution was disappointing. As a group, the Sabres scored the second-fewest goals in the Eastern Conference in 2016-17 (201 on the year).

As for the backup goalie spot, it’s certainly a need, but the goaltender market was really the only over-saturated UFA group in 2017, so Murray had enough available options to be able to shift his focus to more pressing inadequacies.

The list is long, but we’re talking about a man who needs to try and improve his lineup by 12-14 standings points, at minimum. As a notoriously aggressive and assertive general manager, Murray would be up to the task. Whether or not it would be handled optimally… we’ll have to try and make that determination based on historical data (and some good old fashioned gut feelings).

Player Acquisition Tendencies

Starting with player strengths and weaknesses, Murray certainly had a “type”, particularly at forward. As evidenced by the acquisitions of Evander Kane and Kyle Okposo (on top of his high-regard for the likes of Marcus Foligno, Zemgus Girgensons, and Will Carrier) Murray has a “type” up front.

When examining the actual underlying metrics for Murray’s forward acquisitions, it’s clear that he values offensive upside to go with size, and forchecking ability. The narrative that Murray tried to build his forward group in the image of the 2010-2014 Los Angeles Kings is founded in logic.

Though many of the players he brought in were of size, Murray did see the value in smaller skill players, particularly in the top-six. That said, there were very few fast-skating assets, which indicates that the Sabres GM was more focused on positional intelligence than actual speed.

On defense, Murray intended to create a balanced group. The reason I say “intended” is because he certainly targeted traits in specific players, but over-estimated just how much of those physical aspects would result in positive on-ice impacts.

Given his high-regard for Rasmus Ristolainen, and subsequent acquisitions of players like Zach Bogosian, and Cody Franson, it’s safe to say Murray preferred larger defensemen with some offensive upside. Where the “balance” aspect of this comes in is his preference to play Jake McCabe and Josh Gorges in larger roles.

He saw these players as defensively competent enough to allow his more offensively inclined assets do contribute on the rush. On top of misjudging on-ice impacts, Murray’s blue line approach ultimately failed in part due to a Dan Bylsma system that was predicated on long outlet passes in transition.

While this approach could have been due to the team’s general lack of speed, none of Bylsma’s defensemen were particularly good at zone-exit passes. Again, part of their poor metrics in that area could have been because they were asked to fling Hail Mary passes in transition.

One thing that all of Murray’s defensive acquisitions have in common is physicality. All of them could throw the body around. That said, Murray’s active pursuit of Victor Antipin from the KHL (whom he courted prior to his ousting as GM) suggested a potential shift in approach, seeing the value in smaller, faster transition to pair with the physical assets and aid the team in transition (where they struggled mightily during his tenure).

In net, Murray liked big guys mostly. Goalie metrics are inherently inconsistent, so I went with the most obvious common denominator here. No need to over-complicate the most difficult position to assess from an analytics standpoint.

Stay tuned for Part Two where we simulate the 2017 offseason, and establish a final roster for the 2017-18 campaign.

RAPM Charts courtesy of Evolving Hockey

Historical WAR Charts courtesy of JFresh Hockey

Transition Chart courtesy of Corey Sznajder

Photo Credit: Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images