Two of the most amazing sports stories of the last few  years involve teams that went from virtually nowhere to the top of the heap. In 2015, Leicester City was promoted to the Premier League in English football and like all newly-promoted teams, were expected to struggle to remain for a second season. Instead, Leicester played a dream season and woke with the top trophy in hand. Then the Vegas Golden Knights were formed in the NHL. Management assembled a team of cast-offs from all the other teams in the league and the Golden Knights promptly skated into the Stanley Cup Finals.

This year in the EURO League, that rags-to-riches story is being played out in reverse. It defies logic and comprehension that the Athens Gods could win the President’s Trophy as the top team during the regular season and then the very next season, find itself at the very bottom of the standings. The Gods were in that dubious spot for a brief time last week and could be again if St. Petersburg wins its game in hand.

Athens has plenty of time to turn things around this season. There are 57 games left to play. But expectations were sky-high in Greece coming into this season and now Greeks are understandably downtrodden. Ten years ago, a crippling economic collapse began and now, the nation’s favorite team seems to be crumbling.

Team statistics paint a picture that can be filed under Horror Stories.

• Goals per game:  3.71 (4^th in the league) to 2.48 (23^rd in the league)
• Goals allowed per game: 2.59 (1^st) to 3.80 (21^st)
• Shots per game: 32.40 (3^rd) to 30.28 (10^th)
• Shots allowed per game: 27.49 (6^th) to 29.68 (14^th)
• Powerplay: from 4^th in the league to 13th
• Penalty killing: from 4^th in the league to 24^th

Those incredible numbers add up to a nightmare for Coach John Tortorella and GM Stephen R. What could be causing the amazing decline?

Personnel changes? It doesn’t look like it. The only two Season 9 full-time skaters who are no longer with the team are Tomas Vincour and Michael Frolik, unless you count Zach Kassian, who skated in 44 games last year. In goal, last year’s backup Thomas Greiss has been replaced by Peter Thome.  But the rest of the team is back, including the three important centers: Logan Couture, Anze Kopitar and Brandon Sutter.

You might be able to hand a large portion of blame to goalie Jimmy Howard, whose save percentage has dropped from 91.7 to 87.9 since last year, but give the guy a break. And if you’re one of his teammates, lend him a hand. He’s 36 years old now and his knees, back and brain have been through more than 550 regular season games and 107 playoff games. Plus, he couldn’t have anything to do with the drop in offense that Athens is experiencing.

It was hoped draft picks Evgeny Dadonov and Yanni Gourde would improve the team, but they certainly haven’t been the talk of Europe so far, although Dadonov is third on the team in scoring with 16 points in 25 games. Couture is slumping. He has always been around the point-per-game average and he is below that rate this season. And an eye injury to Sutter didn’t help the Gods at all. He missed 8 games.

Still, those excuses/reasons don’t seem to fully explain the major decline in fortunes for the Gods. Perhaps it’s as simple as they are tired out from the great effort that exerted a season ago. If that’s the case, and if Howard and Thome can do better in the goal crease, Athens could start a climb up the ladder, and if they play at all like they did last year, then the playoffs are within reach. And the Gods learned last year that you don’t have to be the top seed to advance in the playoffs.