Part II

On November 27, 2012, John Vogl of The Buffalo News wrote about a 15 year old Connor McDavid for the first time. He was 15 games into his Exceptional Status season with the Erie Otters. The NHL was still in a lockout, and the Buffalo Sabres brain trust was still being run by Darcy Regier and Lindy Ruff. Somewhere in Canada, Tim Murray was probably already well aware of the OHL’s latest phenom. So naturally by the time that Murray was at the forefront of opposing changes to the lottery odds in the mid-2010s, he wasn’t just another prospect on a rebuilding GM’s radar. He was the obsession. Even Murray’s boss was aware of how important McDavid could be.

It wasn’t a coincidence that the Erie Otters were going to play a home game at First Niagara Center in October of 2014, and by the time that the Otters and Niagara Ice Dogs came to town, there were no more secrets about a potential inevitability of the now 17-year old and Buffalo.

Whenever the Sabres lose my Twitter kinda blows up. Fans are talking about me and stuff like that. It’s a little bit different and I really can’t explain it. It’s pretty cool.

-Connor McDavid, October 21, 2014

The fans are incredible. For 11,000+ to come out to watch a junior hockey game, it kinda speaks to their love for hockey and their passion. The fans in Buffalo have been great to me. If I was fortunate to play here it would be unbelievable.

-Connor McDavid, October 22, 2014

So with every Sabres game, whether they liked it in the room or not, someone was thinking about Connor McDavid. Even when they were putting together their best stretch of the season in December, they were obliged to remind everyone that no, tanking wasn’t in their vocabulary.

If players had crossed paths with McDavid in the path, such as Cody Hodgson training with him via Gary Roberts, they were asked about him. When they faced off against teams near them in the bottom, they were asked about him. When you’re Gary Bettman and you’re in Vancouver but the Sabres are in town, you’re asked about him and how teams are thinking about him.

There’s a lottery. You can finish anywhere and it doesn’t assure you that you’re getting any particular player that you want. I know Terry Pegula very well as I know the ownership group in Arizona very well. And I don’t think either of them would be part of anything other than to have their teams try their very best. Any team can win it. Anybody who doesn’t make the playoffs is eligible for the No. 1 pick. I don’t think it’s fair, all of this. On a slow news day, I guess it’s good fodder but I don’t think for one second that our clubs and our players don’t try their hardest.

-Gary Bettman, January 31, 2015

So naturally by the time the World Juniors came around, watching Sam Reinhart was nice, there was “no downplaying” the intrigue over watching Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel compete against their peers.

Of course, nothing about it was easy for the players. Even 6 losses into their 14 game losing streak, the effects of the bigger picture were clear to the more experienced members the young locker room.

Right now, we’re pretty weak mentally. We need to be stronger up in our heads. There’s some guys here not mentally tough enough and that’s unfortunate.

-Jhonas Enroth

It comes down to details. We’re ust not doing the little things to give us a chance to win a game. It comes down to preparation going into a game and it’s got to change if we want to turn the tide here. We’re starting to get back in our old habit of when we get scored on, you see some heads go down. The team gets down. That’s the body language we give off. We have to be a team that plays the same way no matter what. There’s moments in a game where it looks like as a group we don’t want to get in there. I don’t know why.

-Tyler Myers

(Both quotes from The Buffalo News Jan. 9)

Myers was right about something changing sooner than later. After the team did finally win their first game in over a month, Ted Nolan called Myers out as one of the “bright spots on the team” that he saw as a guy you build your team around. That made it into the news on February 4. A couple of days later, the rumors about a Myers trade start heating up, all while Evander Kane trade rumors begin to include Buffalo. And then a week removed from the 4th?

It Begins

The Sabres played their first home game since January 17th on February 5th and picked right up where they left off: being shutout by the St. Louis Blues. In their next game, the Dallas Stars came to town, but the Sabres got the best of them in a 3-2 win. Jim Nill and Tim Murray must’ve chatted over a couple press box cookies that night, as Nill reuinited Enroth with his former head coach in exchange for a conditional 2016 draft pick and Anders Lindback, who was joining the Sabres with a 3.71 GAA and .875 save percentage. Both goaltenders were pending UFAs.

This trade ended up being the appetizer of the afternoon, as where there was smoke from Winnipeg, there was fire, as Tyler Myers, Drew Stafford, Joel Armia (who was having a “bright spot” season in Rochester), Brendan Lemieux, and one of the team’s three first round picks were out, and Evander Kane, Zach Bogosian, and Jason Kasdorf were in.

The Jets swap of went right into, verbatim, becoming “a team harder to play against.” The response to questions about Kane’s off-ice concerns that led to the trade were how we got an all-timer:

It wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows and jujubes. It never is with any player. I mean, players have warts. The best players have warts.

–Tim Murray responding to questions about discussions with Terry Pegula about potentially bringing Evander Kane in

Okay enough quotes. Let’s go to the charts.

Everyone was on the same page here. The 30th place team needed to improve. It just so happens that the main piece of the deal was out for the season. Okay, maybe Ted Nolan wasn’t completely on the same page, as he didn’t know the trade was in the works until it happened.

[I found out] like everybody else. I had brief discussions with Tim previously. I just didn’t know it was going to happen that morning. When you’re dealing a deal that way, I guess you have to be as secretive as you can because you don’t want anybody to find out. I learned a long time ago in coaching that coaches coach, managers manage, and players play…

We’re not going to be sacrificial lambs just to go out there and get slaughtered. We have to make sure we play together, we protect one another and work together. And that’s the only way we’re going to have some kind of success. I told them the only difference between winning and losing most often is not quitting. We’ve got to continue to work hard and you never know.

–Ted Nolan

He was right about the second part. The historically bad team had to just keep their heads down and keep going out there and giving good efforts. Bogosian would take over the heavy minutes that Myers was playing. Kane being injured meant that Johan Larsson could be recalled to fill in for Stafford’s roster spot and take on a larger role. It was a strange season for Larsson. After 4 games up in November, his second callup came as part of an emergency recall in December where he arrived with two minutes left in warmups. In a 5-1 loss to Colorado, he scored the lone goal. After being sent back to Rochester after their January 3 loss to the Rangers, he vented about the frustration of not feeling like he had the trust of the coaching staff, while Ted Nolan called him out for being upset about playing with non-scoring forwards. The larger role worked out well for him. In his final 20 games of the year, he had 14 of the 16 points he had on the season. That finished 10th on the team in points.

Another stretch of injuries in February saw all of Josh Gorges (about to officially be out for the season), Mike Weber, and Nikita Zadorov out at the same time, leading to recalls of Mark Pysyk and Jake McCabe. Both would be sent back down within a handful of games, but Pysyk got the stamp of approval from Ted Nolan as “ready for primetime“, but Tim Murray saw it another way, aspiring for the defenseman to work in Rochester on being better offensively. Nolan “lobbied” for him to stay up, but when Nikita Zadorov was returning to the lineup after another benching from oversleeping, he was the odd man out. Pysyk would not be recalled again during the season, suffering a health scare later that week, collapsing while playing basketball at Blue Cross Arena. He was fortunately cleared to return to game action in April for the Amerks.

In net, Anders Lindback and Michal Neuvirth would be next up to serve larger roles. Neuvirth played well in his first five games after the trade with a .951 save percentage in those games, granted the team went 1-2-2 in those games (the lone win, stop me if you heard this before, came in the only of the five games that they scored more than 1 goal). He was rewarded for his hard work…with a ticket to a playoff team.

The Deadline

Neuvirth would be sent to the Islanders for Chad Johnson and a 2015 third as part of the 2015 trade deadline. The other moves saw pending UFAs Chris Stewart, who was linked to the Bruins in the lead up to the deadline but did not end up going there, and Torrey Mitchell moved for a 2017 second round pick from Minnesota and forward prospect Jack Nevins from Montreal, respectively. While the Sabres missed with their own 2017 second round pick, Marcus Davidsson (two picks before Jason Robertson by the way), the Wild’s pick salvaged the round, as Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was selected with that 54th overall pick.

While he was getting both PK and PP time by the time his Sabres tenure ended, the team moved on from Brian Flynn, who was moved to the Canadiens as well for a 2016 fifth round pick (turned into Vojtech Budik, who went to Czechia after his junior career was complete).

Overall, the traded players were happy where they ended up, and Chris Stewart had some parting words that encompassed how the fanbase was feeling generally too:

I do feel for [the players left on the roster]. Just for the fact everybody keeps talking about the ‘Tank Nation’ and all that and tanking for McDavid. I know those guys in the dressing room. They gave it their all every night. It’s something that they’re not thinking about coming to the rink every day. It’s frustrating hearing that every game. It’s kind of insulting to the guys in the dressing room who go out there, block shots, get their faces punched in, and play the right way…I know days are dark right now. It’s not going to last forever. They definitely have got some pieces and are going in the right direction.

-Chris Stewart via The Buffalo News, March 3, 2015

While the moves were expected, they were still “disheartening“, The day had an extra frustrating wrinkle for Chad Johnson, who was asked on TSN about the Sabres and tanking during a live interview. The day was another formality towards the ultimate goal of welcoming a franchise-resetting center to the fold. McDavid was the aspiration, but the more likely result was also paying attention, and he knew: He was comin’ for them.

We keep moving closer in Part 4.

Post Script

In the category of Things You Forgot, I bet you don’t remember that the LeSean McCoy for Kiko Alonso trade was the day after. And then less then 24 hours came the Matt Cassel trade. What a fever dream of a sports year in Buffalo.

Photo Credit: Buffalo Sabres Twitter