After the Buffalo Bandits 2014 season had ended at the hands of the defending NLL Champion Rochester Knighthawks in the Eastern Conference Finals, it was time for General Manager Steve Dietrich and head coach Troy Cordingley to perform their post-mortem examination of the 2014 squad.
During the offseason, Dietrich and Cordingley came to the conclusion that while they had excelled last season in the defensive aspect of their play (Bandits defense ranked 3rd in 2014, allowed 200 goals in 18 games while they allowed 211 goals during the 16 game 2013 season), the offensive side of the ball really needed to be improved upon as soon as possible since the Bandits ranked sixth in offense last season.
Using the 2014 NLL Draft as the starting point to help restore the Bandits offense back to prominence, Dietrich and Cordingley selected forwards Brandon Goodwin, Tyler Ferreira, Jordan Dance, Mike MeInychenko and transition specialist Matthew Bennett.
While evaluating the selections that the Bandits have made in their 2014 draft, a couple of very important highlights seem to stand out from their player profiles. The most important factor that jumps out at you right from the get-go is the fact that every player shoots left handed. The second factor that the Bandits scouting staff placed very highly on their selections was the fact that these players are fairly tall at 5’8” to 6’1” and have some solid weight to them as they range from 145lbs to 195lbs.
Dietrich and Cordingley both verified after the draft that the right side of the offense was just a little more dominant than the left (if you take away the production of Tavares, Williams and Benesch) so that’s why they rebuilt the left side. To help bring the Bandits back to a proper balance, Dietrich and Cordingley believe that by restoring the left side of the offense, they will be able to bring both sides of the offense back in equal balance and restore them back to prominence.
Before the 2014 draft, the Bandits depth chart on the left handed side of the offense consisted of forwards Ryan Benesch, John Tavares, Chad Culp, Shawn Williams, and transition specialists Andrew Watt, Joel Matthews and Jordan Critch. With the addition of the 2014 draft class to the Bandits roster, Cordingley believes that forwards like Goodwin, Ferreira, Dance and MeInychenko will be “Players that can play both sides of the ball. They can play offensive without the ball and be able to create space for guys like JT. They’re definitely capable of doing that.”
While the class of 2014 does bring in their size and strength, the other valuable gift that they offer is youth. Time definitely waits for no one and that definitely rings true for Tavares and Williams who turned 46 and 40 respectively this year. There will eventually come a day when Tavares and Williams will bow out gracefully and retire. There’s just no stopping that.
What the Bandits do hope is that by the time this happens, these players will have learned as much lacrosse IQ as possible from these leaders and step up to help lead the franchise into the next decade and beyond.
