Editor’s note: Lindy Ruff was hired to coach the Buffalo Sabres on Monday. This story was originally published on April 20, 2023, when Ruff was coaching the New Jersey Devils.
A quarter century ago, Lindy Ruff made a seamless transition from popular teammate to successful head coach, applying pranks and principles, blending light-heartedness with square-jawed strategies to remain a charismatic leader for generations of players.
Ruff entered the postseason with 900 wins, making him the most successful NHL coach never to have won a Stanley Cup. The hockey world — unless facing his New Jersey Devils — is rooting for Ruff to have his name etched in silver.
The Athletic interviewed 19 of Ruff’s former teammates, coaches, players and assistants to share their favorite stories that illustrate what has made him a legend at the rink or with a needle and thread for 44 years.
Jim Schoenfeld, Sabres teammate: People throw these words around all the time: dedication, courage, competitiveness, perseverance. To Lindy, those weren’t just words. They were a call to action. That’s the way he played and the way he lives.
Bill Watters, Ruff’s player agent: He built a fine career from an underage kid who had broken his leg right before the draft and through the loss of his brother, and what he’s done since he stopped playing is more substantive yet.
Scotty Bowman, Sabres GM and coach: He did a lot of spadework for our team.
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Sabres name Lindy Ruff as head coach
Larry Playfair, Sabres teammate: At the end of his first season (in Buffalo) my nose was a mess. I had to go to the hospital to get that fixed, and he went into Buffalo General to get this 18-inch rod pulled out of his leg. I didn’t know that until the end of the season; he played the whole freaking year with this rod and didn’t say anything to anybody.
Schoenfeld: You saw the scar. You knew he had a surgery, but the way he approached the game was, “I don’t need anybody feeling sorry for me. I don’t need anybody giving me quarter. You don’t need to know what I’ve been through. I’m just going to play my ass off against you or with you.”
Playfair: I can’t tell you a guy that was more injured than Lindy that played through pain. Nobody that I played with, at least.
George Babcock, Sabres equipment manager: He was tough. He would run on the treadmill, and you would swear his heart was the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread.
James Patrick, Rangers teammate, Sabres defenseman, Sabres and Stars assistant coach: He was one of those guys who got traded to a new team and, day one or two, he was in the back of the bus with the leaders.
Greg Brown, Rochester teammate and fellow Rangers assistant: He came down to the American League with complete humility. Lindy doesn’t have to pretend. He’s an alpha. He just led his way. He doesn’t step on anyone’s toes, but he says things when they need to be said.
Mike Weber, Sabres defenseman: The passion he played with as a player bled into how he coached. He was very in-your-face, but it was all about the team.
Patrick: He has presence. He has physical presence. He can have a booming voice. He knows when he has to show his presence.
Dave Williams, Sabres equipment manager: He had a great way of getting the guys to not quite hate the coaching staff, but he knew they’d rally to prove him wrong.
Weber: I was a young guy just looking to stay in the National Hockey League, so I don’t want to say it was fear, but he was almost like a father figure where you’re looking to impress him.
Williams: At the Winter Classic, it was freezing. We asked (assistant coach) Brian McCutcheon if he wanted a hat. He said, “No, if Lindy’s not wearing one, then we’re not going to wear anything.” So we asked Lindy, and he said, “No, the hard-nosed people of Buffalo, look at them out there. They’re not wearing hats. I’m not wearing a hat.” Everyone else was freezing their balls off, and Lindy was stone-faced.
Michael Peca, Sabres captain: When you have a personality like he does, when things aren’t going well, the players aren’t going to overreact to it because he’s not overreacting to it. A lot of coaches I played for didn’t understand that principle.
Mike Ramsey, Sabres teammate and best man (and vice versa): His moral compass is as good as it gets. He is a man of principle. That being said, Lindy is a character. You’ve got to keep your eye on him because he’ll pull the greatest pranks when you’re not paying attention.
Patrick: The normal person has no idea.
Bowman: I had a lot of players over the years, but I never had much maintenance with him because he has a much lighter side.
Peca: When he was an assistant coach in Florida, (former Sabres and Panthers defenseman) Jason Woolley said he was the funniest guy at the rink every day.
Patrick: He has a wicked sense of humor. Great one-liners, great imitations.
Brown: He had a great ability to be incredibly intense and competitive and not lose his sense of humor. Not a lot of people can walk that line and find that balance.
Williams: I can’t tell you the number of times I wondered, “What Lindy am I getting today?”
Danny Briere, Sabres co-captain: You never knew. He was really good at keeping you on your toes.
Patrick: Lindy is probably the biggest team prankster that I ever played with.
Jeff Holbrook, Sabres video assistant: He loved it.
Ramsey: If he was injured and not out there with you at practice, something was going to go down.
Randy Moller, Rangers teammate: When I got to New York, it was toward the end of Lindy’s career. His back was a mess. He wasn’t in the lineup, but he was around all the time, and everybody knew he was always up to something.
John Van Boxmeer, Sabres teammate (Ruff was his best man, too): He was always screwing with guys’ clothes.
Stu Barnes, Panthers and Sabres forward: Guys would come back after practice and everybody would only have one sock in their shoe.
Patrick: I can’t remember if he took home ec or if his mom taught him how to sew, but Lindy is an incredible sewer.
Moller: Lindy was the best seamstress I’ve ever seen in my life.
Van Boxmeer: He would sew the cuffs of your pants together so you couldn’t put your foot through.
Moller: He sewed my wallet inside my pants during my first practice with the Rangers. So when I went back to the hotel to buy lunch, I couldn’t get my wallet out of my pants.
Ramsey: You’d have to check to make sure your zipper wasn’t sewn down. He did the zipper trick to (former Sabres winger) Mark Napier after he got traded to us. Everybody was watching him get dressed, and he just couldn’t zip up his pants.
Brown: When we were coaching in New York, David Oliver’s young boys were in to visit from British Columbia. Lindy stitched one of the boys’ zippers down so he couldn’t pull his zipper up. He did it to, like, a 9-year-old.
Van Boxmeer: God forbid you were ever running late for practice because you knew all the laces on your skates or shoulder pads would be cut.
Patrick: That’s how Lindy liked to keep his mind occupied.
Ramsey: It’s childish stuff, but, man, it sure was a lot of fun.
Holbrook: I was a big runner. In front of the entire team he said, “Let’s run the Turkey Trot. I bet I will beat you.” I laughed. I mean, how much money you got? He checked in for us, picked up our numbers and chips. We run the race, and I beat him by a mile. Next day in the paper, we see the results, and Lindy Ruff beat me by 22 minutes. He asked for his money in front of the team. I paid him and he said, “I have to let you know I switched our chips.”
Patrick: We’d be out on the ice practicing, and you had no idea what he’d be doing to your car. He would move them.
Ramsey: We were at the Sabreland practice rink, and a lot of guys at the time had Chevy Trailblazers, the hot car at the time.
Babcock: He took all the keys off the guys’ rings and switched them up.
Moller: Back then, there was no keyless entry.
Ramsey: Nobody could start their cars.
Babcock: He sat there in the parking lot and watched all the guys try to figure it out.
Moller: He did it with the Rangers, too. We were all standing outside in the nasty weather, freezing our asses off, looking at each other because none of us can get in our cars. Lindy slowly drives past with his window down, waving.
Van Boxmeer: At the team meal the day of the game, he’d crawl from one end of the table to the other and put sour cream on the tops of guys’ shoes. Then he’d sit back down, and someone would yell, “Shoeshine!” or “Shoe check!” and everybody would groan and check their shoes.
Holbrook: He would always find a way to get into your hotel room. You’d lay down on your bed and he would step out from behind the curtain.
Patrick: He was legendary with putting money on a piece of thread at the airport.
Playfair: One time, Lindy borrowed $5 from Tony McKegney. A couple of flights came in and people were chasing the $5. What Lindy finally did was just let a guy catch the $5. The guy put it in his pocket. The joke was on Tony. He chased the guy down.
Ramsey: I lived on No. 8 at Glen Oak golf course, and he lived on No. 7, on an out-of-bounds corner. We would sit on his patio and wait. They’d think they found their ball in his yard and go back to the cart for a club, but it was a ball he’d tied to a fishing pole.
Patrick: He would glue a nice, new Pro V1 to fishing line and have it 50 yards out on the fairway. When someone would go pick up a free ball, he would start reeling it and freak them out.
Ramsey: We were like 12-year-olds.
Williams: We were in New Jersey and a bunch of us had plans to go to a Toby Keith concert. Lindy caught wind of it.
Babock: Our video guy, Corey Smith, went on the trip with a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, everything!
Williams: Lindy tells Corey on the bus from the airport to get up and announce there’s a 7 p.m. meeting at the hotel and tells Corey to have all his video equipment set up.
Babcock: Corey was so devastated, he made the announcement and sounded like somebody died.
Williams: He got off the bus and just sat on the curb.
Babcock: All dejected! He wanted to kick a tumbleweed! We were crying. We were asking, “Gee, Corey, you’re going to miss the concert. Maybe you can see half of it.”
Williams: It went on for about two hours.
Holbrook: And here’s the thing: You could never really get him back.
Williams: He was untouchable. For one, not a lot of people had the balls to prank the coach.
Holbrook: He was the alpha in that regard. We would conspire to do something, and it was never as good as you thought it would be. He would find a way to defuse it, and make you realize, “This wasn’t nearly as funny as if he would have pulled it on us.”
Babcock: He was wily and sharp.
Holbrook: He would always get you in the end.
Ramsey: He is one competitive bastard.
Babcock: Bar none. At everything.
Williams: Cards and bowling and golf and pool …
Ramsey: Even fishing. That’s just his nature.
Holbrook: There are some Bo Jackson stories out there about him.
Williams: He’d be standing on the other side of the ice and ask, “You think I can get this puck through that microphone hole?”
Babcock: First shot, at MSG, he knocked the foam right off the microphone.
Michael Gilbert, Sabres communications director: Here’s a moment people still talk about now: During the 2004-05 lockout, he played in my senior beer league. Our teams were playing, and he thought he was coming after me but crushed an older guy on our team. So my brother went after him, and Lindy went back at him, calling each other assholes. That’s all he knew, playing hard.
Holbrook: He was the best at any single game you wanted to play. If you had him as a partner, you were going to win.
Brown: Lindy was outstanding at cards. So you had to be sharp if you were sitting in the back of the bus.
Patrick: There are times even as a coach where he’ll go play cards with players, and he’ll clean them out.
Ramsey: When we lived together, we had a pool table and ping-pong table in the basement. We would play to decide who was going to cook dinner or clean up or whatever. We used to bowl after practice, sometimes six, eight, 10 games.
Gilbert: When you’re wired that way, you can’t get de-wired.
Van Boxmeer: When I worked out with him, I always wanted to be able to do one more rep than him, but he always set the bar. He could always push himself and drag everybody else along.
Schoenfeld: It all adds up to being committed and putting in the effort to be good at whatever he thinks is worth doing.
Bowman: I don’t know if you know much about Lindy as a golfer, but I’ve never seen a guy like it.
Van Boxmeer: He’s a lefty. He could hit the ball long and straight, a frozen rope every time. He was a 4 handicap, I think.
Schoenfeld: He was one of the first guys I ever knew who studied an instructional tape. He worked hard at it.
Ramsey: Then his game went to hell.
Van Boxmeer: He said he lost his swing.
Ramsey: We were on a fishing trip and he goes, “I’m going to start playing right-handed.” I said, “Shut up.” He played right-handed for the first time and shot 46 over nine holes and beat me.
Schoenfeld: You wouldn’t have known that he hadn’t played that way his whole life. You don’t just do that.
Holbrook: He’s a freak that way. I don’t know if it’s true, but there’s a story about him having a hole-in-one both ways.
Williams: We had end-of-the-year parties at the Buffalo Club. First time we bowled, he said, “Hey, Willy, you want to make a bet?” All right. … I lost. Then he says, “I bet you I can beat you left-handed too.” So I took that bet. … He was better.
Radek Faksa, Stars center: He has a good heart, but he’s strict. He always tried to motivate you and make you try your best.
Weber: The thing with Lindy was you had to earn it.
Peca: I was named captain at 23 years old after missing the first 18 games in a contract holdout. He made it so easy, dealing with that transition. There were other candidates who could have been our captain. He believed in me and saw something in me. Having that come from a former captain of the Buffalo Sabres meant a lot to me.
Briere: When I was traded to Buffalo, even before I got there, he asked “So where do you feel more comfortable playing? Where should you play?” That year, I had been struggling defensively in Phoenix, and now I’m coming to the East with players like Joe Thornton and Eric Lindros. My initial thought was, “Well, maybe I’m better suited on the wing.” He said, “That’s interesting, but you’re going to play center. You’re going to finish the year at center. We see you as a center and don’t care what happened before. Just put it in your head.” He had that quiet confidence about you.
Brown: He has a great ability to read the team.
Holbrook: When you thought you were going to get shit on after a bad loss or a losing streak, he would do something to bring you out of it.
Patrick: It shocked me how every day he could have something new to say.
Holbrook: One time, we were in Ottawa and thought we were going to get bagged at practice. He said, “We’re not going to practice today.” We went down to the Rideau Canal for a walk. He spoke about how lucky we were to be in the NHL. Guys thought it was going to be the worst practice of their life, but we bounced back, won the next game and did well.
Peca: Even in times where everybody is a little bit frustrated and upset, he was able to find some humor and some wit in that situation and kind of diffuse it a little bit.
Brown: He understands the modern athlete as well as anyone.
Briere: He’s a mastermind.
Holbrook: He would find the buttons on guys. You’re never going to win 100 percent of the battles, but he also knew some guys needed to be coddled, and some guys needed to be yelled at.
Barnes: They brought me in to score and I didn’t score for like the first 27 games. He was positive along the way. I don’t remember specifically, but there were some jokes like, “Really? Can we send you back? Can we get a return on this?”
Briere: He didn’t want you to get too comfortable so he could get the most out of you.
Faksa: He can be a really tough guy to play for.
Babcock: (Thomas Vanek) was great, but was he a lazy dog when he got here? Yeah! Lindy was all over him, rode him like a frickin’ mule, benched him in the playoffs. Vanek didn’t know it at the time, but Lindy was the best thing for his career.
Van Boxmeer: I thought he would have a tough time with P.K. Subban because he was a difficult individual for some coaches. Lindy was able to just put him in his place in a non-confrontational way. Lindy can make a guy understand he’s being an asshole without calling him an asshole.
Weber: You would see him with those same guys he was being hard on, sitting down and having breakfast the next morning or a coffee and just shooting the shit.
Barnes: His foundation has always been his ability to connect with players and be a good person.
Patrick: We had a player who showed up late one day in Dallas. They had the Halloween party the night before. This player came in and wasn’t there for the meeting and missed the video session, but got there in time for the ice session. The player said, “I’m not going to lie to you. I had way too much whiskey last night, way too much hard stuff. I slept in this morning, and I’m lucky I even got here.” Lindy said, ‘You’ll be on the ice for practice, but you’ll pay the team fine. Don’t let it happen again.” Then he came into the coaches’ office, and he was laughing. He said, “That is a first. I’ve never heard that excuse. That’s balls.” He was so happy the player just came out and said that. Lindy’s been out drinking with the boys too late. He’s done it all, and he’s seen it all.
Gilbert: The NHL’s better because of Lindy.
Holbrook: When Lindy came to Buffalo, it was an absolute mess. He maneuvered that.
Briere: Lindy would adapt a system to the players that were given him. The day I was traded, all my friends back home said, “Oh, you’re done. Lindy Ruff is a defensive coach. He doesn’t believe in offense. He wants to win games 2-0.”
Holbrook: He was criticized all the time for being a defensive-minded coach, but that’s what we had. We got to the Stanley Cup Final with a team of third-liners.
Briere: I got there, and the team was transitioning with Chris Drury and J.P. Dumont and myself and Maxim Afinogenov and Thomas Vanek and Derek Roy and the young group coming up the ranks. We had three scoring lines! Lindy would make deals with us. “All right, you want to take chances? Well, I’ll let you try big plays and turn pucks over here and there, but you have to give me this back.”
Gilbert: I don’t know if there’s a coach in any of the four sports that had a long run with four different ownership groups in Buffalo alone.
Briere: That’s the reason he’s lasted a lot of years. He’s so good at coaching what he has rather than have the players adapt to his style.
Peca: If you talk to a lot of people after the last couple of years, they probably thought Lindy didn’t have what it took anymore.
Watters: I felt badly when the New Jersey fans started booing him. I thought, “Jesus Christ, they’re only three games into the program!”
Playfair: At some point, you think you’d get old and crusty and just move on from the game.
Patrick: He has passion for the game and still has a lot of energy. I know you look at him on the bench and my friends say, “Man, he looks a lot older.” You get to know him in person, he has a hearty laugh, and he enjoys life.
Playfair: He’s been able to remake himself and stay legitimate through it all.
Gilbert: I have to think there are way more people than not out there who would love to see Lindy win the Cup.
Bowman: These Jersey guys are fast and creative. They are loaded with young players. They got a really good power play. Jack Hughes is splendid. He looks a lot like Gretzky at times. Lindy’s got a good chance to have a nice run with that team.
(Photo: Sam Hodde / NHLI via Getty Images)
