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Lindy Ruff Stifles Offensive Players |
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It will be Chad Johnson vs. Antii Nieme, errrrrrr, Niemi tonight in Dallas.
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...And the band played on. Ball Of Confusion.
That's what the world is today, hey, hey.....
Lindy Ruff doesn't know how to coach offensive players. He's a dinosaur and a troglodyte from the 1980s. For years, Ruff's critics in Buffalo called him a Neanderthal and a knuckle dragger. They said that he ruined skilled players like Vanek, Pominville, Connolly, Roy, Briere, et al. He was branded by the lunatic fringe as a hook-hold-clog-up-he-middle-slow-down-the-game-choke-the-skill-out-of-the-NHL- kind of coach. In another life long ago, Lindy was a warlock who cast spells on human beings who were blessed with God given speed and off the charts manual dexterity. His evil spells are alive and well today.
Lindy's Stars are an NHL best 16-4-0 right now.
Dallas just won their fourth straight game by defeating the Ovechkin-led Washington Capitals 3-2 at on Thursday night. On Tuesday night, Ruff's Stars skated out of Buffalo with a 3-1 win.
Call Lindy what you will. Just don't call him a dinosaur and a has-been/never-will-be.
Ruff's Stars can beat you any number of ways. If you want to dangle, snipe, celly hard he will see your best and raise you. If you want to trap his Stars he will trap your stars. If you want to play river hockey, game on. If you want a bar fight with heaviness and snarl, he's game for that action, too.
The Stars are the fastest team in the NHL right now. They have high octane forwards and D who have after burners on their Bauers. What's most impressive is that Ruff believes that the puck is the fastest man on the ice. Lindy is correct. His D have some of the fastest hands in the free world. They move the puck like lighting strikes to their forwards in mid-flight.
On Tuesday, I asked Lindy about his team's reputation as being a blitzkrieg.
"We are a quick strike offense. That's the way we play. We push the pace and pressure the opponent with our speed. Are we the fastest team in the NHL? I hope we are".
It's working, Lindy.
The Stars, who are 7-1-0 in their past eight games and 10-2-0 in their past 12.
Ruff's Stars are now the top of the NHL food chain with 32 of a possible 40 points in their first 20 games played, their best start to a season in franchise history. The Stars are 7-2-0 in front of their home fans.
I asked Ruff about what he though of the Sabres on Tuesday night. He was very impressed with Dan Bylsma's team's speed, structure and how well the Sabres executed in all three zones. Ruff said that his team had to be very patient against the Sabres because they had to respect the Buffalo skill up front and on their blue line.
On Friday, Ruff praised the effort that the Sabres put forth against St. Louis on Thursday night.
“We know we’re going to be in for another [tough game],” Ruff said. “They played a good game in St. Louis. We’ve already looked at it. They out-chanced them. They had a couple 5-on-3s. I thought they skated really well. Their defense is big, it’s strong, it’s got long reach. And up front, they’ve got some guys that can skate. It’s a totally different team than we saw last year.”
Ruff's comments echoed the praise that Kevin Shattenkirk heaped on the Sabres after the Blues' Thursday's night 3-2 shootout win.
“They weren’t the old Buffalo Sabres,” Shattenkirk said.
“I think they’re a different team, they’re a much better team. They have a lot of guys in there now that kind of instill that into their young guys. I don’t think it caught us by surprise, but it was something that we realized during the game that they are not going to go away. At any moment, with the kind of skill they have up front, they can make you pay.”
These are not Ron Rolston's Buffalo Sabres. Nor are they Tank Nolan's Sabres.
These rejuvenated, retrofit Sabres are earning respect and props from all corners of the NHL.
Gone are the days when the Buffalo Sabres get boo-boo face and pack their hockey bags when they are trailing by a goal or two in a game.
That was last season. Not now.
The Sabres will have to bring the same type of passion level and effort tonight that they invested into the St. Louis game because the Stars will be rested and ready. A flu bug is running through the Stars' locker room right now and Lindy left his boys off the ice for rest and recovery on Friday.
Ruff's soldiers have already assembled four winning streaks of three or more games this season.
The Stars have yet to lose consecutive games in the first 20 game segment of the season.
“Those points are big. Nobody would have anticipated where we are,” Ruff told Stars.com.
“Keeping our feet on the ground and staying motivated for that next game, these guys have done a tremendous job of putting the game away. Win a game, put it away. Even after the losses we’ve been able to put it away and bounce back with a win. The record we have is a credit to the fact that we didn’t lose two in a row, and we bounced right back.”
What's most impressive is that Dallas has built a 12 point cushion between themselves and the ninth place team in the Wild, Wild, West. Good luck to middling teams like Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary, Anaheim, Colorado, and Arizona as they scramble to try to make up ground on Dallas.
At the 20 game juncture of the 2014-15 season, the Stars were struggling and were five points out of a playoff spot.
Three Stars are among the top four scorers in the NHL right now Tyler Seguin Jamie Benn and John Klingberg are off to great starts. At the 20 game mark, the Stars are the top scoring team in the NHL and are averaging 3.55 goals per game. And there’s plenty of depth scoring. The Stars are getting routine primary, secondary, and tertiary scoring. Seventeen different Dallas players have scored goals. Eleven Stars have scored three goals or more. allowing 2.50 goals per game, ranking 16th in the league.
Another knock against Ruff over the years is that he has no clue how to manage his goalies. Right now, he is shutting up his critics with his dominant two-headed goalie monster. Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi have been lights out while allowing 2.5 goals per game, which ranks #16 in the NHL.
“It’s getting better,” Ruff said. “I think it’s gotten better from the first ten to the second. For me, that’s where we needed to make progress. And we’re still progressing. I think our goaltenders are in tune with what we are trying to do, which helps.”
If the Stars keep up this torrid pace, Lindy Ruff will be collecting another Jack Adams Trophy isLas Vegas in come June 2016.
The Sabres (8-9-2) will want to start faster than they did against the Stars on Tuesday and the Blues on Thursday. They will also want to stay out of the penalty box at all costs. The Sabres can ill afford to kill penalties like the five minute boarding major that Tyler Ennis took against Alex Pietrangelo took just five minutes into the game against the Blues. The Stars enter tonight's game the #2 ranked power play (28.3%) unit in the NHL. They have scored 17 PPGs in 20 games. They have scored 9 PPGs on home ice.
On the other side of the puck, the Sabres are the NHL's #4 ranked power play (22.6%) with 14 PPGs for. However, they have only scored 4 PPGs on the road.
Bylsma's Bunch was a disappointing 0-4 on their power play chances in The Loo. The Sabres blew it on two glorious 5-on-3 PP opportunities. The Sabres could have put the Blues away had they scored on their two man advantage opportunities against St. Louis.
Ryan O'Reilly, Buffalo's moral compass and leading scorer, blamed himself for not being a better power player against the Blues.
“It's frustrating”. “I thought we had a good jumping start. We have to be better in the PK. It's my responsibility as well. Power play again; two 5-on-3's, that's a must-convert. That's on me. I had multiple chances to bury them.”
The Sabres have now earned points in five of their past six games where they are 3-1-2. Stealing points from San Jose and St. Louis were moral victories for ROR and the Sabres, however, that's not good enough. O'Reilly refuses to pat himself on his own back for moral victories. He says that he gets paid the big bucks to win games.
O’Reilly leads Buffalo in scoring with 16 points with 7Gs and 9As in 19 games played.
O'Reilly and the Sabres will have to bury all of their chances in Dallas. The Sabres have scored only four in its past three games. Their lack of offense has been masked by solid team defense and excellent goaltending. The Sabres have allowed only two goals or fewer in seven of their past nine games.
The Sabres are 4-3-1 on the road. What is impressive to me is that Buffalo is now 1-1-2 vs. the big, bad, super skilled teams of the Western Conference.
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Mark Pysyk (lower body) and Zemgus Girgensons (upper body) will miss their second straight games. Both are listed as day to day. D Mike Weber (knee procedure) will also sit.
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