Why Sabres' Coach Lindy Ruff Has A Smirk On His Face

The quips in the above post-game video came from a coach who was on the winning end of a 1-0 victory.

Lindy Ruff is like any coach and/or player:  win the game and the mood is much lighter. If you're on the losing end, darkness envelops the room.



Lindy Ruff Post Game 1

But Ruff seems to have a "cat-who-ate-the-canary" look about him. It's a look that was captured after the first game in the post game presser.

Even after Game 2, when the Sabres paraded to the penalty box in a 5-4 defeat, he took the "yeah, I know" approach to his team's play.  After that game he said, "I am proud of the emotion that they fought through. I am not upset that we took it a little too far because the response is what we were looking for and they came back at them hard."

After a decade of dealing a with highly-skilled, yet extremely soft team, he's got himself a team that has the grit and tenacity that he had when he played. He knows it and he's kinda giddy about it--win or lose.

"It was a war when we left Philadelphia" Saturday evening," he said. "It will be a war tomorrow when we go back there and it will be a war Sunday when they come back here. Emotions are running hot."

An Early Game 1 Scrum

Were the Flyers ready for this?

I don't think so. Since when, this past decade, have you ever heard an opposition player, especially from the Philadelphia Flyers, say that the Sabres seemed to want to get into a street fight with the Flyers, as Fly-boy, d-man Sean O'Donnell suggested.

Danny Briere, the Flyers star forward and himself a former Sabres star, said the tough series is good for both teams. "If that's the way it goes, fine," Briere said. "They can play that way. We can play that way." (Sporting News)



Nate Gerbe Body-slams Claude Giroux,
and Gets A Double-minor in Game 2



And the hockey world knows that the Philadelphia Flyers can, in fact, play that way. It's woven into their fabric.

What the Flyers have done this series, though, is goad the Sabres into asserting their toughness by having them play with too much of an edge, too much emotion. The aggressiveness, especially after the whistle, has lead to many Fly-boy powerplays.

Mike Weber Protects His Goalie
In Game 4

Game 4 was different in one respect from the three previous: the refs seemed to tire of the Flyers as victims routine as evidenced by the Daniel Carcillo/Ryan Miller matching-minors.

Carcillo was going after an academy award with that one. "They're getting away with murder out there," Flyers captain Mike Richards said. "And we got called every time [Dan Carcillo] was on the ice. It's frustrating, but we've got to battle through it. It's a physical series."

A physical series that the Sabres are actually winning.

Forget the statistical "hits" counted by the NHL. Check out this headline from Philly. com columnist Phil Sheridan after last night's loss by the Flyers:  Sabres get better of nasty play.

The Sabres are playing a tough, hard-ass game, and it's paying dividends--almost.

Although the Sabres could only muster a round of boos from their home fans on a five-minute powerplay, the fact that Flyers captain Mike Richards was whistled for a major penalty on an elbow shows that the Flyers were thinking about the Sabres game in general and Pat Kaleta in particular:


Pat Kaleta Cleanly Levels Ville Lieno
In Game 1

From philly.com:  Richards said he was protecting himself from Kaleta. So did coach Peter Laviolette and the captain's teammates. "I think he was protecting himself because you never know what

Patrick Kaleta is capable of," winger Kris Versteeg said. "He's a dangerous player out there when it comes down to it. You never know if he's going to run you from behind, or he's going to hit you without the puck."

In my opinion, I believe that the five-minute major was warranted. Richards threw an elbow at Kaleta, it hit exactly where he wanted it to. Richards is shrewd. Although no one will ever be able to prove it, I believe he threw that elbow with intent to injure and I also believe that he thought he could get away with it in the name of "self-defense."

One final note on that penalty. It's done. No further punishment is needed.

As for the series, from Sheridan:

The "Goose" doesn't care if former-
Sabre Daniel Briere remembers his
time as a Sabre fondly. (Game 2)

"...the Sabres have gotten the better of the physical play in this series. With no Chris Pronger and no Jody Shelley, the Flyers are missing a couple of the intimidating players who might discourage some of that physicality.


"They're hard on the right guys," Carcillo said. "They haven't said boo to some of the other guys who they know will fight back. That's the way they play. That's the way they've always played. So we'll see what happens in [Game] 5."

He had a point, though, about the Sabres' approach. There is little doubt that former Sabres star Danny Briere, the Flyers' smallest player, is a special target for extra punishment. After the game, Briere walked through the locker room with a cut on his left cheek and a nasty red welt across his neck. He was at the bottom of that postgame pileup of angry players.

Sabres d-man Mike Weber clears Daniel Carcillo
and the crease in Game 4

So why does Lindy Ruff have a smirk on his face?

His team is more physical, especially on the back end, than any team he's had since 1999. They're more skilled up-front than that team as well.

And maybe, just maybe, he knew after the first game that this team, playing like they did that night, has a good chance to pull off an upset in the first round.

********Addendum********

From WGR's Paul Hamilton:  Sabres Ruff thinks Flyers are whiners

The Flyers think the Sabres "Get away with murder." The Sabres had four power plays in Game 4 while the Flyers had three. Buffalo was on the PP for 9:41 while Philadelphia had 4:41 with the extra man. In Game 2, the Sabres were shorthanded for almost 16 minutes, but last night, Mike Richards and Daniel Briere both thought they were not getting a fair shake from the officials. Lindy Ruff, well he's tired of it, "I just feel that they're doing a lot of whining. I didn't hear any whining when they had ten power plays in Philly and I didn't hear any whining when the power plays in the first game were lopsided, but all of a sudden there's all this whining that we're getting away with murder, that's a bunch of crap. That's for the media, that's for the officials to read, that's for here let’s get the next call, that's a bunch of crap, let’s just play. We're just playing, there hasn't been one word about officiating out of us, but if they want to cry about the officiating or whine about different calls, go ahead."

When Ryan Miller heard that they were getting away with murder, he couldn't stop laughing, "Murder huh? He's just trying to start spinning something (Richards), he's a smart guy, he's been around awhile, he's been through a lot of these battles and he obviously knows that some attention needs to be drawn to something. I think he's just trying to draw it away from himself. That elbow (on Kaleta) is something we're trying to stay away from and he threw it, no matter who's coming at you. It's Patty Kaleta and he's got a reputation, but Patty hadn't hit him yet, he didn't even know what Patty was going to do and he got an elbow in the face so I think it's a big smoke screen. Mike is trying to throw everyone off his trail."

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