By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Brayden McNabb of the Sabres

Taken in Round 3 in 2009

Other picks in the round: The leader from this group in NHL games played now is a familiar name: Cody Eakin, who joined the Sabres as a free agent. Reilly Smith (Dallas) and Tyson Barrie (Colorado) also turned out to be solid choices.

The details: McNabb had to get out of the Sabres’ organization to find success. The defenseman mostly played in Rochester from 2011 to 2014. Then Buffalo dealt him to the Kings in a package for Hudson Fasching and Nicolas Deslauriers. He spent three years in Los Angeles as a regular, and is on his fourth year with the Vegas Golden Knights.

Other 66s: You’d think someone would have been taken by the Bills at No. 66, but it’s never fallen properly. The cupboard is empty for the Sabres too. Mike Gazdic went to the Sabres in 1978, but spent one year in Milwaukee in the International Hockey League and headed to college.

(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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