In his second season in his second stint with the Sabres, Ruff led one of the more remarkable turnarounds in NHL history and was named a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year. Buffalo was 11-13-4 and last in the Eastern Conference on\u00a0Dec. 5 before ending the season on a 39-10-5 run to win the Atlantic Division with a 50-23-9 record, its first division title since 2009-10.\u00a0 The Sabres also ended the longest Stanley Cup Playoff drought in NHL history (2010-11).<\/p>\n
Buffalo lost to the Montreal\u00a0Canadiens in seven games in the second round.<\/p>\n
“When I took the job, I thought, number one, I wanted these guys to like being a Buffalo Sabre,” Ruff said after the season. “I think they like being a Sabre and I think they made our city proud. It wasn’t the result we wanted and to a man, they’re all disappointed. But they gave them everything they had in the can.”<\/p>\n
The Sabres were fifth in goals per game this season (3.45) and tied for 10th in goals allowed (2.93) after finishing 20th in the\u00a0NHL last season (3.50).<\/p>\n
Ruff is the\u00a0winningest coach in Sabres history, going 657-494-100 with 78 ties, including his first stint with them from 1997-2013.<\/p>\n
He ranks fourth in League history in wins and is 950-741-169 with 78 ties in 1,938 regular-season games for the Sabres, Dallas Stars and New Jersey Devils.<\/p>\n
Ruff played 12 NHL seasons, including 10 with Buffalo from 1979-89. He served as captain for three seasons (1986-89).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his second season in his second stint with the Sabres, Ruff led one of the more remarkable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-655044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655044","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=655044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}