No. 88: July 15, 2013 – The Bandits trade first-round draft choices in 2015 (Randy Staats) and 2016 and a third-round draft choice in 2017 (Frank Brown) to Minnesota for Ryan Benesch and Andrew Watt.

The Bandits had gotten used to success during the 2000s, so missing the playoffs in 2013 did not go over well. General manager and coach Darris Kilgour was shown the door, and Steve Dietrich – a former Bandit goalie – was picked to be the new GM.

Dietrich wasted no time in completing his first transaction. He picked up a pair of veterans in Ryan Benesch and Andrew Watt from Minnesota for three draft choices, including two first-round choices.

Benesch couldn’t have done much more for the Bandits during his four seasons here. He peaked in 2015, when he scored 55 goals and 58 assists for 113 points. Benesch was always dangerous around the net; he took a pounding but found a way to score every night. That made him one of the league’s best scorers. Watt spent five seasons here and was released in 2017. Staats was the NLL Rookie of the Year in 2016, and has scored at least 30 goals in all four of his seasons in the league.

Budd recaps 100-90 on this edition of the Sylvester & Peck On Sports Podcast:

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

 

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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