On December 8th, the Buffalo Sabres sat 30th in the NHL in points percentage and dead last in the Eastern Conference at 11-14-4. The playoff drought that had defined the franchise for more than a decade looked like it would stretch to a fifteenth year. But what followed was one of the best 40-game stretches in NHL history, a 32-6-2 run that carried Buffalo from the league’s basement to the top of the Atlantic.
The reason this is a coaching story and not just a hot streak that saw many of Buffalo’s players reach the top of their game is that the man behind the bench was the one constant through a decade and a half of tumultuous times in Buffalo. Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff was in his first stint with the Sabres all the way back in 2011, when they last made the postseason.
In the 14 years since Ruff last took the Sabres to the playoffs, the team cycled through six head coaches: Ron Rolston, Ted Nolan, Dan Bylsma, Phil Housley, Ralph Krueger, and Don Granato. None of them finished above .500 during their tenures in Buffalo. Five general managers came and went. The roster turned over completely. The common thread, when the drought finally broke, was Lindy.
The mid-season turnaround did coincide with some front office changes; Kevyn Adams was fired as General Manager on December 15th and replaced by Jarmo Kekäläinen. Nonetheless, the group of players Ruff steered out of the depths of the Eastern Conference was essentially the one he began the year with. The additions were more depth-focused. The Sabres added defensemen Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn and forwards Tanner Pearson and Sam Carrick right before the trade deadline.
Some of the strongest evidence of the coaching was in net: heading into the season, one analyst ranked the Alex Lyon–Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen tandem 26th among the league’s 32 teams. Ruff rode the hot hand between them all year, and it held. Luukkonen finished with a 2.52 goals-against average on a team that gave up the league’s fewest goals after mid-December.
The numbers tell part of it. Star forward Tage Thompson scored 40 goals, Rasmus Dahlin ran the blue line with 19 goals and 64 points, and Mattias Samuelsson posted a team-best +41. But the clearest sign of the coaching was collective: Buffalo allowed 47 fewer goals than the year before and scored 18 more. They didn’t just get hot. Under Ruff, they became a different team, one that defended, that trusted its goaltenders, and most importantly, that believed in one another.
That very belief carried them to the Atlantic Division title, the second overall seed in the Eastern Conference, and a round one victory against the Boston Bruins, before a heartbreaking game seven overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens in round two saw an amazing season come to a close.
Ruff came up just short in the closest three-way Jack Adams race since balloting results for this award were first published in 1983-84, per NHL.com. Cooper’s winning margin, just three points over Ruff, is the second-narrowest overall, behind the one-point win by Ruff himself over Peter Laviolette, 155-154, in 2005-06.
While Ruff may have come up just short of the hardware, he walked into the KeyBank Centre last October with a 14-year playoff drought looming over the franchise, and walked out an Atlantic Division champion. But more important than any award, Ruff gave the city back something it has dearly missed and the new generation of Sabres’ fans had grown up without. The passion came roaring back, and with it, something that hadn’t been felt in fourteen years. Playoff hockey was back in Buffalo, and the city believed again.
Coach Cooper has long been skipped over for the Jack Adams, because his teams were just “automatic” and shouldn’t need coaching. This year, because of what Lindy did, it should have all but guaranteed him winning the award. While many of us initially gave all the credit of the “dead cat bounce” to Jarmo’s selection as GM, more than a couple of folks here offered a more compelling reason for that turn-around, being the replacement of the strength & conditioning coach. Maybe it was a bit of both, but it’s as though the voters just dismissed what Lindy did, which is just wrong.
Agree, Lindsay should be clear winner! Happy for the franchise and fans of Buffalo! 2027 has flyers vs Sabres in semi’s