The Buffalo Sabres named their longtime former head coach as head coach once again and it always felt like this was the path forward
When the Buffalo Sabres fired Lindy Ruff in February of 2013, it felt like it was time for it to happen. He’d been the coach since 1997 and led the team to the Stanley Cup Final in 1999 and to the Eastern Conference Final three other times in 1998, 2006, and 2007. He was their head coach the last time the Sabres made the playoffs in 2011, but the years that followed .
When general manager Kevyn Adams spoke last Tuesday following the dismissal of head coach Don Granato, assistant coach Jason Christie, and video coordinator Matt Smith, the parameters Adams put in place for what he was looking for from his choice for the next coach all seemed to describe Ruff to a “T.” Even colleague Matthew Fairburn made sure to pointedly ask him if Ruff was the guy he wanted, only to be rebuffed brusquely saying, “I think what you need to know is that as I walk out of here, know I have a plan.”
That plan was to bring back Lindy Ruff.
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We went over a lot of what the case for (and against) bringing back Lindy Ruff was about last week.
While we’ve been digesting a lot of how things broke down last week, this process to find the next coach moved very quickly and word came down less than a week after Granato’s firing that they had their new (old) coach. For all the boxes Adams needed checked in a new coach (NHL experience, an ability to be harder on players, holding them accountable) Ruff checks them all and, perhaps more importantly, Sabres fans know he does.
Bringing in someone like Craig Berube, Gerard Gallant, Jay Woodcroft, Bruce Boudreau or anyone else the fitting credentials, it would’ve meant taking their words and the words of other players and executives elsewhere that, yes, they can do all those things and get the job done to help get the Sabres back to the playoffs.
But that’s thing, right? Ever since Ruff was let go the first time, everyone—fans, media, management, ownership—has been taking someone else’s word for why hiring Ron Rolston/Ted Nolan/Dan Bylsma/Phil Housley/Ralph Krueger/Don Granato was the right idea and why they’d be able to do things the way they needed to be done. Whether it was the league suggesting people to hire (something that’s done with semi-regularity, particularly with management hires), consultants, or candidates themselves, they’ve had to rely on the opinions of others to make a choice.
With Lindy Ruff, everyone knows what they’re getting with him and who they’re dealing with and what his track record is. Terry Pegula knows him from being a fan of the team and dealing with him as a relatively new owner in the NHL. Kevyn Adams knows him because he was an assistant coach on his staff in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013. And, perhaps more importantly, the fans know him. They remember him as a player for the team for 10 years, a true fan favorite. They definitely remember him as the head coach for another 16 years and that’s the familiarity that counts the most in this case.
The fans remember how Ruff handled his teams in the past. He was demanding, he would yell, he would bench players when it was necessary. He would push back on reporters and do things the way he needed them to go. That reputation matches up with what the leading players were all asking for following Granato’s firing. Ruff will do all those things and the players have to be ready for what they’re about to encounter. Getting off on the wrong foot could put a player in the doghouse immediately and make it a lot harder for them to get the ice time they desire.
There’s also a misconception that comes with that reputation. Everyone, rightfully, thinks of the team Ruff to the Stanley Cup Final in 1999. That team was buoyed by an all-time great goaltender in Dominik Hasek with a group around him that was as hard-nosed and blue-collar as it could get. The ‘99 team wasn’t stacked with offensive fire power, but they outworked everyone in the East on the way to the Final against Dallas. They were gruff and veteran and only outdone by a Stars team that was even more grizzled and gnarly with a coach in Ken Hitchcock who knew best how to pull their strings.
It’s easy to think that Ruff would be an old-style coach and look to throw the clamps down on this self-admitted high-flying offensive team the Sabres have now, but when you look back at what he did with the Dallas Stars when he coached them and particularly more recently with the New Jersey Devils, Ruff is a guy that knows best how to use what he’s got.
From 2013 to 2017 in Dallas, at 5-on-5 (thanks Natural Stat Trick) the Stars were top-10 in CorsiFor and in expected goals for percentage. What the Stars didn’t get was great goaltending. Their 91.7 save percentage at 5-on-5 was fourth worst in the NHL during those years. Between Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn, he had two of the better scorers in the NHL and in Benn’s case he was the league’s leading scorer in 2014-2015.
But his starting goalie all four years there was Kari Lehtonen and his array of backups had illustrious names like Dan Ellis, Anders Lindback, Tim Thomas post-Boston greatness, Jhonas Enroth and Antti Niemi post-Chicago greatness among them.
Ruff got the Stars to the playoffs twice in four seasons and to the second round in one of those years. Not bad, not great, but the Stars weren’t very deep up front and better days were ahead for them in coming years.
In New Jersey, we saw the Devils go from doormats for the first two seasons under Ruff. The 2020-2021 oddball season coming out of the COVID shutdown is difficult to gauge but we got a small sample of what guys like Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt might be capable of.
In 2021-2022, things got worse record-wise for New Jersey and an injury to Hughes robbed us all of what would’ve been an incredible breakout season as he had 56 points in 49 games. Bratt led the team with 73 points in 76 games and Nico Hischier had 60 points in 70 games. Young players leading the way for a team finding their way. The Devils also had an astounding seven different goalies start games that season.
But last season, the 2022-2023 campaign, saw it all come together and the Devils appeared to have arrived. They had 112 points and were one of the best teams in the NHL. They advanced to the second round of the playoffs but were undone thanks to goaltending that appeared to run out of gas late in the year. Hughes was incredible with 43 goals and 99 points in 78 games. Hischier had 80 points in 81 games including 31 goals. Dougie Hamilton joined the team and led their attack from the blue line to the tune of 74 points while Bratt had 73 points in a full season’s worth of games.
During that four-season span, minding that Travis Green coached the final 21 games of this season, at 5-on-5 the Devils were seventh in CorsiFor percentage and ninth in expected goals for percentage in the NHL. But once again, it was goaltending that let down Ruff’s team. The Devils were 30th of 32 teams in 5-on-5 save percentage and for perspective’s sake, the Sabres were 27th in the same statistic over those same four seasons.
This sets the table for the Sabres to potentially get the best of both worlds from Lindy Ruff. They can get the guy who will classically hold players accountable and be tough when it’s needed and provide an inspirational voice as well all the while providing the kind of system that plays to the roster’s strengths. At least at 5-on-5 anyway.
The power play will bear watching closely because the Devils’ power play the past four years was less than ideal. They scored 162 goals on the power play during that time which tied them with Chicago for 24th in the league. The Sabres, by comparison, scored 176 goals in that same amount of time. The hope will be that fresh eyes as a head coach as well as from assistants to be named later will help figure out how best to run the Buffalo power play because, ye gods man.
We’re not going to pre-emptively damn Ruff for the power play here but considering how big of a problem it was for Buffalo the past season-plus, getting it right under new leadership is absolutely a priority. But that’s something for another time.
Right now, bringing in Ruff as an experienced guy with a track record would’ve checked all the right boxes if he never coached here before. This would’ve been looked at in a way that’s vastly different because his résumé would speak for itself. But history has a way of altering the view.
The current state of matters with the Sabres, wherein they’ve been guilty of placating the fans using history to soften a hard blow (see: Pat LaFontaine and Ted Nolan joining in 2013) is a tactic that’s been played before to less-than thrilling results and even more mysteries left unsolved. The fact that the fans are well-beyond pissed about how things went this season after the big tease a year ago and how a lot of fans that thought they were back on board with season tickets felt like they got fooled again by yet another disappointing season. Bringing back a beloved figure like Ruff wins over some of the fans because of what he’s accomplished already.
But while it may fill the barn for their home opener after returning from Europe, Ruff can’t fill the building by himself night after night, but he’s the guy that can help make it happen by getting the current version of the Sabres to scare the bejesus out of the rest of the league by playing like those 2006-2008 Sabres or even the 2022-2023 Devils. If he can do that, the fans will be fighting to get into the arena while the team fights to not just get to the playoffs but advance deeper into them.
No pressure, though.