The wisdom to know how to handle it has come through years of coaching, from understanding what helps \u2013 and what just doesn’t.<\/p>\n
“I’d probably put it that I’ve gained a lot of experience when it comes to being highly emotional,” Ruff said. “You learn. I’ve had to learn hard lessons about getting too emotional and maybe at times being too hard on players and being too hard on games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’ve gone from a coach that used to address the team after every game to hardly going in after games anymore \u2013 to digest the game first. Take a look at it. Take a look at it with the other coaches and then we’ll deal with it, most of the time, the next day.”<\/p>\n
Not everything is perfect for the Sabres, though all of Ruff’s decisions before Game 3 seemed to pan out. With Josh Norris sidelined and day to day, he returned Noah Ostlund to the lineup, with the rookie\u00a0
rewarding him with a goal and an assist. He also opted to go with Alex Lyon in net instead of Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who had started the first two games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And he opted not to put additional stress, additional outside pressure on a team that is still new to the postseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ruff is pleased with the way his team responded, with the way he responded, with the hard-fought knowledge he has gained on handling players, on pushing buttons, on being sensitive, a result of a lifetime in the game, a coaching career that started before 16 of the 20 players on the Game 3 roster were born.<\/p>\n
Where did he learn that? When?<\/p>\n
“That came from just deciding that the only guy that feels really good after a game when he goes in there and is a little upset is me. Doesn’t do anything for anybody else,” Ruff said. “I myself have to take responsibility for my actions too at times. I think over the years, you’ve got to learn to be a better person and a better coach and I think I’ve adapted to that.”<\/p>\n
So how hard was it for him to change that competitive fire, especially as compared with his playing days?<\/p>\n
“Don’t know if I’ve really changed it,” he said, starting to laugh. “I just changed the time I address it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wisdom to know how to handle it has come through years of coaching, from understanding what helps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-605961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}