Commentary
Save your venom for someone who truly deserves it
MATT KRUEGER Sports Reporter
Every time Daniel Briere or Chris Drury touches the puck in Buffalo, the sold-out crowd in HSBC rains down a cascade of boos on the former Sabres captains, the men who led Buffalo to back-to-back Eastern Conference finals appearances.

Radio call-in shows and Web site message boards overflow with angry sentiments about Brian Campbell "turning his back on the city that made him a star" and renouncing him as a traitor simply because he wouldn't accept the contracts offered by management. You can bet the next time Campbell plays in Buffalo, the fans won't chant his nickname "Soupy." They'll find a far more colorful epithet for him.

When Eric Moulds caught a slant pass over the middle during the Buffalo Bills preseason game against the Tennessee Titans last August, the crowd at Ralph Wilson Stadium ignored the decade of effort and work Moulds put in while playing for the Bills and chastised him with boos.

So you have four men who played their hearts out for their former teams, were revered by the Buffalo fans and now probably couldn't walk into the Walden Galleria without getting chastised by "betrayed" fans.

And I can do is shake my head in amazement.

What does this say about our community that we treat people in this manner? These are the same fans who showed such class in the Richard Zednick and Kevin Everett incidents in the previous six months. Buffalo received praise from fans around the country for the way they responded to Zednick's slashed throat and Everett's broken neck. And the fans deserved a pat on the back for their behavior.

But every time I see a former Sabre or Bill come back to Buffalo and get booed for having the audacity to sign with a different team, I feel ashamed. Briere, Drury, Campbell and Moulds are good men. The only difference between them now and during their Buffalo playing days is the name on the front of the jerseys they wear.

Look at it this way, if a competing company offered you twice as much money to do the same job you currently have, would you tell the recruiting office to stick it? Heck, no. You'd do the same thing as everyone else. You'd take the job and the money and not look back. It's the same thing with athletes. This is their job. And if someone wants to pay them a boatload of money to do it, don't think less of them for taking the deal. You would do the same thing, and

you know it.

If you want to ride a former Buffalo athlete, why not stick with someone like Dominik Hasek or Willis McGahee, men who dumped on Buffalo before they even had one foot out the door. Do you remember how Hasek "negotiated" his own trade to Detroit, making sure the Red Wings didn't give up anything to the Sabres and then told everyone he would go into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a Red Wing before even playing one game with Detroit? Do you remember McGahee blasting the Buffalo area for having "nothing to do?" Well, we know there's one thing he was doing in Western New York, racking up nearly as many paternity suits as touchdowns.

Don't even get me started on that O.J. Simpson fellow.