It's days of future past for Sabres in hiring Lindy Ruff as coach

The Buffalo Sabres are having a back to the future moment in the hiring of Lindy Ruff as their coach.

If anyone could be called "Mr. Buffalo Sabre," it's Ruff.

He played for the Sabres for 10 seasons in the 1980s during his 13-season NHL career, and he coached Buffalo from 1997 to 2013. In fact, it was Ruff who was behind the bench when Buffalo last made the playoffs in 2010-11. 

The Sabres have had seven coaches since they fired Ruff, 64, who is the winningest coach in franchise history.  He led them to three Eastern Conference Final appearances and a trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

Despite in many ways being the epitome of the tough, old school and demanding hockey coach, Ruff is great with young players and can coach to the strengths of any roster he is provided.

Ruff also coached the Dallas Stars from 2013-14 to 2016-17 and the New Jersey Devils from 2020-21 until he was fired about three-quarters through this past season.

Ruff coached the young, speedy and offensively talented Devils to a 112-point season in 2022-23 and advanced to the second round in the playoffs. 

That team was quite different from Ruff's Sabre teams of the late 1990s that were built around the goaltending of all-time great Dominik Hašek and defense that lost in the conference final in 1998 and in the Cup Final in 1999. 

And when he coached in Dallas, the Stars were among the league leaders in goals in two of his four seasons.

So it will be interesting to see what Ruff can do with Buffalo's current roster that includes two young defensemen who were No. 1 overall picks in Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power, jumbo-sized sniper Tage Thompson and veteran goal-scoring winger Jeff Skinner.

You can bet that the Sabres' Atlantic Division rivals are not feeling too comfortable about those possibilities.