Sabres thoughts: Lindy Ruff wants to get Buffalo right, Dylan Cozens returns and more
With Buffalo's 3-2 win over Ottawa, Ruff became just the second coach in NHL history to have at least 600 regular-season wins with one team.
www.nytimes.com
Lindy Ruff said coaching the Buffalo Sabres this season has been like driving a car you haven’t driven in a while. It’s an older car, but once you start driving it and get a look under the hood, you start to get a feel for how to get it running really well.
“I’m a guy that from Day 1, I always think I can fix everything,” Ruff said. “I haven’t been able to fix everything. This year has been a disappointment for me from Day 1.”
The Sabres beat the Ottawa Senators 3-2 on Tuesday night, and Ruff, 65, became just the second coach in NHL history to have at least 600 regular-season wins with one team. But the hope when Ruff came back to coach the Sabres this season was that he would hit this mark a bit sooner. He didn’t expect to be coaching a team that’s 29th in the NHL in points percentage. The Sabres were only one season into this league-record playoff drought when Ruff was fired by the Sabres 17 games into the 2012-13 season. He came back to a franchise that has a lot of baggage, and fixing it hasn’t been simple.
“I really want to get this right,” Ruff said when asked about the possibility of returning to coach the Sabres next season.
Ruff also noted that his compulsive drive to fix everything drives his wife nuts. Occasionally, he’s had to relent and call in an electrician. It might be time for that in Buffalo, because he’ll need additional help to get this situation right. What exactly that looks like remains to be seen. Will Ruff make changes to his coaching staff? Will owner Terry Pegula make changes to the front office? And what about the roster?
Those questions will determine to what degree Ruff can get this car driving again. For now, Ruff is just trying to get it back to the garage in one piece. The Sabres have 12 games left in another lost season. But back-to-back wins against the Winnipeg Jets and Senators show that the players aren’t mailing it in to close out the campaign.
Here are some other takeaways from Buffalo’s win.
1. Dylan Cozens has been doing a lot of smiling lately. It’s been just over two weeks since Cozens was saying emotional goodbyes at the Sabres’ team hotel in Fort Lauderdale after the team traded him to the Ottawa Senators as part of a deal for Josh Norris. But Cozens has quickly looked at home with the Senators. He has eight points in nine games with the Senators after underwhelming for most of the last two seasons in Buffalo.
Of course, a change of scenery can do wonders for a player like Cozens. The Sabres have seen that happen with plenty of players over the years. And Cozens was honest about the energy in Buffalo as the losses piled up.
“There’s definitely a lot of negative energy here over the years, which takes a toll on you,” Cozens said. “It takes a toll on everyone. No one can block that all out. Yeah, it’s nice to be on a team that’s in a good spot right now and pushing for a playoff spot. There’s lots of good energy, good, positive vibes in the room, which makes it easier to show up every day and come to the rink every day.”
Cozens was an alternate captain for the Sabres this season and was one of the team’s leaders even before he wore a letter. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong for him after a 68-point season in 2022-23. You could point to the injury he suffered after losing a fight to Garnet Hathaway in early November last season. But what happened a month later seemed more important in the arch of Cozens’ story. After a loss against the Hurricanes in December, Cozens said, “We’re way too soft this year. I feel like we don’t kill plays. We kind of get bullied and stuff, and we know we need to be way harder to play against. We’re too easy to play against right now.”
General manager Kevyn Adams didn’t like the use of the word “soft” and made that clear publicly. At a key moment, Cozens tried to use his voice as a leader and cut to the core of his team’s issues. Adams undermined that message. That was just one example of Cozens not having a ton of leadership around him in the organization. He spoke Tuesday about the pressure he put on himself to be part of the solution in Buffalo. That’s gone now and replaced with the pressure of proving the Senators right in this trade.
“Especially with where this team’s at in the season, not wanting to screw things up for them,” Cozens said. “There’s definitely some pressure there, but we got off to a good start there so that helped me settle in a bit.”
Cozens got an assist but was minus-2 in his return to Buffalo. After collecting 17 hits in his first two games as a Senator, Cozens has 15 in the seven games since. Time will tell what the rest of Cozens’ career looks like, but he has a real chance to go to the playoffs for the first time. And that’s clearly energized him in a way we haven’t seen in at least a couple of years.
2. Norris, the other big piece of that trade, spoke on Tuesday but didn’t offer much clarity on when he might get back into the Sabres’ lineup. He’s missed six games with what has been described as a mid-body injury. Norris said it was an injury he had been dealing with and aggravated over an accumulation of games. Norris missed multiple weeks in February with a mid-body injury after he got cross-checked in the back in the third period of a game against the Wild. He returned from that injury in late February, but that seems like the one that’s giving him trouble now. Ruff said they aren’t going to risk him getting hurt more, but it doesn’t sound like shutting Norris down for the season is a thought just yet.
3. Jacob Bernard-Docker scored a big goal for the Sabres to tie the game at two in the second period. The defenseman acquired in the Cozens trade has gotten off to an encouraging start in Buffalo. He now has three points in his last two games.
“It’s not my game, to be honest with you,” Bernard-Docker said of the offensive production. “It’s great when the offense comes, but for me, it’s just taking pride in being hard to play against and making sure I’m reliable.”
So far, so good for Bernard-Docker on that end, too. The Sabres needed another right-handed defenseman after trading Henri Jokiharju, and Bernard-Docker is getting a nice audition to show he can carve out a role.