The 2004–05 Buffalo Sabres season was to be the 35th for the National Hockey League franchise that was established on May 22, 1970.
Buffalo's picks at the 2004 NHL entry draft, which was held at the RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina on June 26–27, 2004.
Thomas Vanek, Derek Roy, Ryan Miller and Jason Pominville among others, played the season in Rochester.
HSBC Arena (now the KeyBank Center) hosted a pair of Rochester games experimenting with blue ice to see if blue would make the television appearance better than white.
[27] The blue ice experiment was ultimately not accepted in post-lockout rule changes.