Mike Harrington: Lindy Ruff already has started his deep dive on Sabres' issues
"I believe before you can win, you've got to learn how not to lose. You have to make the opposition deserve it and I think we've kind of got to go down that road," said Sabres coach Lindy Ruff. "I think that the skill is there to score, but can we defend at a high level that can make us a really...
What has Lindy Ruff been up to a lot of the time the last seven weeks since he got rehired as Sabres head coach?
Mostly watching hockey.
Sure, he’s followed the playoffs with a keen eye on what has put the Florida Panthers a game away from their first Stanley Cup. But what he’s really been doing is going down the wormhole of the Sabres’ 2023-24 snoozefest of games.
Better him than us. We already lived that sludge of a season.
“I’ve watched whole games, got recommendations where one of the coaches will say ‘Watch this game. Watch that game,’” Ruff said during a chat this week in KeyBank Center. “I’ve watched some of the back-to-back games because the record was bad and back-to-backs are tough for everybody.”
(Ugly reminder: The Sabres went 3-9 in the second game of back-to-backs, getting shut out or held to one goal in five of them. And they lost nine of their last 10 in those spots after winning the first two of the season.)
“I’ve gone through faceoffs, percentage worst in the league. Rush defense, one of the worst in the league. You start watching games and try to answer the questions. Why is it that way? Some of it can just be player effort-related. Some of it is back-to-back games, the opposition is fresh and you’re tired, you might have to play a little different style.”
Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff has spent his first seven weeks on the job studying game film from this season and developing a plan to make the team better. Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News
Ruff has used defense coach Marty Wilford as a sounding board about a lot of the games and new assistant Seth Appert for insight into the players, especially some of the younger ones who came through Rochester.
“He knows these players better than I do, at this point,” Ruff said. “We’ll talk about (JJ) Peterka. We’ll talk about Jack Quinn, about lots of guys. He gives me a real good idea, really, what to expect.”
The Panthers’ trip to the Cup final makes six straight years for an Atlantic Division team to play for the game’s top prize. The Sabres, of course, are merely trying to break the longest playoff drought in NHL history, and Ruff said mindset will be key.
“I believe before you can win, you’ve got to learn how not to lose,” he said. “You have to make the opposition deserve it, and I think we’ve kind of got to go down that road. I think that the skill is there to score, but can we defend at a high level that can make us a really consistent team? And that has been the conversation with all the players that I’ve had.”
Ruff is studying details such as line changes, defense pinches and a whole gamut of issues the Sabres have identified in the wake of the season and said, flatly, “There’s definitely things that we can change.”
Ruff’s top priority, of course, is hockey, but this is quite a different set of circumstances for him. At this point in their tattered history, he is the Sabres’ most marketable commodity. More than any of the players. And the team has put him all over social media, on billboards and in sessions with fans and season-ticket holders.
“That’s a lot different, really,” he admitted. “On the one hand, I’ve said there’s really only one thing I care about, and that’s coaching. I’m not really interested in anything else. But my heart’s invested in Buffalo. It has been since I got here as a 19-year-old (in 1979). And that’s the part that said, ‘Damn, I’ll take this on.’ Because I’m a Buffalonian.”
Accepting this job, remember, wasn’t so automatic after Ruff got fired in New Jersey. His first conversations with General Manager Kevyn Adams didn’t involve an immediate yes.
“But then we got seriously into conversations and I talked with my family, with my wife,” he said. “It was kind of a family agreement to take this on and do it.”
Sabres coach Lindy Ruff, second from left, watches Bills minicamp practice on Wednesday with, from left, owner Terry Pegula, Sabres General Manager Kevyn Adams and Bills General Manager Brandon Beane. Harry Scull Jr. photos, Buffalo News
Ruff chuckled at that point. Just like he was doing when talking about his trip to Bills camp on Wednesday that included a quick ping-pong match with GM Brandon Beane.
“He might have had me by just a little bit,” said a smiling Ruff. “But I think if the game would have went on, I could have wore him down.”
Adams has fostered a close bond with Beane, his Bills counterpart, and head coach Sean McDermott has done likewise with previous Sabres coaches Phil Housley, Ralph Krueger and Don Granato. McDermott joined Granato on the bench for pregame warmups in 2022 and was a guest with Terry Pegula and the coach during development camp last summer.
Ruff, a longtime Bills fan, said he enjoyed chatting with McDermott and that coaches can cross sports and share philosophies.
“I’ve loved their turnaround, and I had some questions for him,” Ruff said. “Their defense has been so good at making it tough for the other team to get anything going at times, and that’s kind of where we’re at. We can be good offensively, and we’ve got to get better defensively. He was talking a little bit of scheme and the type of players they need to play the system they want, and that’s what we’re going to be trying to do.”
Ultimately, what Ruff is trying to do is break that playoff drought. Just get in. Only then can anybody start dreaming about 1999 or 2006 or 2007 happening here again.
“We’re not spending a lot of time talking about the big picture. That will take care of itself when when we take care of the day-to-day business,” Ruff said. “Every coach is learning every day. And even from (Florida’s) Paul Maurice and (Edmonton’s) Kris Knoblauch there now, you want to get better for the next game. Even now. The small picture for us is going to be a lot more more important than looking at anything else.”
Ruff needs 36 wins next season to be the fourth coach in league history to get to 900. At 64, going into his 24th season as a head coach, the quest for a Stanley Cup still has him supremely motivated.
“If you want energy and attitude from players, you have to bring energy and attitude yourself,” he said. “You have to be invested in your practices, in your coaching. They have to see that the energy of the coaching staff is equal or greater than their energy.
“They’re going to demand that and we’re going to demand a lot out of them. The attitude they can control, the amount of effort they put into practice they can control. And then I’m the guy that gets to decide whether that effort is good enough.”
Ruff laughed at his own mic drop. He’s ready.
