Commentary
Sabres and Bills draft tough to fill needs
Like someone who just realized on the Fourth of July that he had forgotten to mail his Christmas cards, both the Sabres and the Bills find themselves in similar pickles as they prepare for their oncoming seasons.
The hockey team has made a welcome but belated commitment to toughness, a realization that may not pay off for two or three seasons.
The football team, after virtually ignoring its offensive line for most of the last decade, drafted a couple of offensive lineman known for their toughness, the sort of thing which pushes the ball over the goal line when it has been moved deep into the opposing red zone.
The Sabres, after watching their finesse players bullied around the ice for the last few seasons, invested in a trio of draft choices who at least bear the look of a new security force.
Forward Zack Kassian, their first pick, was widely acknowledged as the No. 1 hard guy available in the draft. Defenseman Brayden McNabb was the second pick and Marcus Foligno, whose blood lines as a tough guy are legend in Western New York since he’s the son of Sabre Hall of Famer Mike, came in the fourth round.
The problem with hockey draft choices, unless they are in the category of Alex Ovechkin, Pat Kane, Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin, is that they require two or three years to fully develop.
Junior hockey or the U. S. colleges seldom serve as immediate springboards to the NHL. It’s a little different with NFL rookies, especially offensive linemen who must mesh with a unit, quickly learning the moves and idiosyncrasies of the players alongside them.
They’re like stage actors. They have to learn not to bump into the furniture. The expectation is that Eric Wood, whom Buffalo drafted with the second of its first-round picks, and Andy Levitre, its second-round pick, will eventually be the starting guards this season. But the Bills’ entire offensive line will be new, either by the addition of free agents or the changing of positions.
For instance, Brad Butler, who started at right guard in his second season last year, is now the starting right tackle. Wood and Levitre may not join the first unit until mid-October and who knows when that totally new unit will function like a chorus line?
All of the major-league sports and the results of their drafts differ. Baseball may be the biggest crapshoot of all. For instance, pitcher Cliff Lee had the potential of a Cy Young winner when Montreal drafted him, but he traveled an agonizing journey before he actually performed as a Cy Young winner in Cleveland. Josh Hamilton came into baseball with A-Rod ability but who knew what inner demons lurked in him? He was 27 by the time he shook off the demons with the Texas Rangers and became one of the game’s best hitters.
The NBA underwent a style revolution in the ’70s when the first high-school prodigies were allowed into the league. Unlike hockey and baseball, basketball had no breeding ground to polish its uncut diamonds who had compensated by competing against men and sometimes actual pros in the summer competitions like New York’s legendary Rucker League.
The game changed to accommodate their great talents so the precision game like the “find-the-open- man” philosophies of the great New York Knicks and Boston Celtics teams dissolved and a dose of playground basketball came into the NBA. That’s why the pros are now so smitten with high-school age Ricky Rubio, who dominated much older players, even pros, in Spain, which teems with basketball courts.
Football and hockey fans have to be more patient. The words to describe the Bills and Sabres have to be “better late than never.”
Larry Felser, former News columnist, appears in Sunday’s editions.
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