New Jersey made it to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2023
New Jersey made it to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2023
The major impetus for the Buffalo Sabres dismissal of Don Granato and the hiring of Lindy Ruff was the club’s failure to snap the longest playoff drought in NHL history. The winningest coach in franchise history spoke to the media on Tuesday and said that he sees a great deal of similarities between the Sabres and his former club, the New Jersey Devils.
“(The similarities are) the style of play, we’ll try to play a real fast game.” Ruff said “Every player has something to offer and a different skill set, but use that skill set to make us the best offensive team. We really had a team (in New Jersey) that had defense that was involved with the play to help a great offense. That’ll be a big part of it.”
The Devils snapped a four-year postseason drought last season under Ruff, with a franchise-record 112-point season and eliminated the New York Rangers in the first round before bowing out to in the second round to Carolina. This season, New Jersey ran into a slew of injury issues that led to his firing in March after going 30-27-4.
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"We faced a lot of adversity. We at one point lost (Jack) Hughes and (Nico) Hischier at the same time. You lose Dougie Hamilton for the year. Two of our veteran defenseman went the free agent route," Ruff said. "We knew we were gonna have to try to develop Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec. We had three young defenseman with Kevin Bahl."
Injuries are not predictable, and the Sabres dealt with their own health issues with the loss of Tage Thompson, Mattias Samuelsson and Jack Quinn this season, but the main reason for the Devils demise was a lack of goaltending that could not steal points. Buffalo does not have that issue with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen establishing himself as a starter this season, so if Ruff can get the Sabres on track, he could repeat his success in New Jersey and end their 13-year playoff drought.
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