The Buffalo Sabres had a terrible start to the 2025-26 regular season, going 5-8-4 out of the gate. The start cost Sabres GM Kevyn Adams his job, but for the remainder of the season, Buffalo went 45-15-5 to be the best team in the highly–competitive Atlantic Division.
The Sabres beat the Boston Bruins in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs before they fell in seven games to the Montreal Canadiens in the second round, so there was a lot of good from Buffalo this past season. And in this year’s batch of TheHockeyNews.com’s grades for Buffalo players, coaching and management is largely going to be positive. But everyone is different, so we’re going to see variance in the grades we hand out.
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So, let’s get to it. Today, we’re grading someone who might’ve been fired had Buffalo not rebounded early in the season – head coach Lindy Ruff:
Position: Coach
Grade: A-
The Skinny: It’d be a massive understatement to say Ruff was feeling pressure to produce above-average results in 2025-26. As one of the NHL’s oldest coaches at 66 years old, Ruff was vulnerable when the season began. And the truth is he may have been only a loss or two away from being fired by new Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen. But Buffalo went on to win 13 of their next 14 games, and from that point on, Ruff was pushing all the right buttons to get the most out of his players.
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Ruff wound up nominated for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s top bench boss in 2025-26 – the fifth time in his career he was a Jack Adams nominee. Ruff won a Jack Adams in 2005-06, and although he hasn’t won the Jack Adams again, the fact he’s still coaching more than two decades later is a testament to his staying power and lasting influence on the game.
If we’re nitpicking, the reason Ruff doesn’t get an ‘A’ or ‘A+’ grade is about a couple of things: the poor start to the season counts against Ruff, even if he eventually figured out how to turn things around. And the Sabres’ power play ranked 21st in the league at 19.5 percent efficiency. It wasn’t a perfect season, and that’s essentially what you need to get an ‘A+’ out of this writer.
Ruff is a Buffalo legend, and if you’re a Sabres fan, you want a Buffalo legend to be a key contributor to a reinvigorated Sabres organization. Ruff got a two-year contract extension out of Kekalainen, and he was completely deserving of having job security – at least, as much job security as any NHL coach can have in the churn-and-burn coaching business.
There’s no guarantee the Sabres will be as strong as they were most of last season. And if things go down the tubes, the end will come swiftly for Ruff. Buffalo can’t afford a step backward next season, so the pressure on Ruff isn’t going to dissipate anytime soon.
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The existence of a coach in this day and age is transitory in the extreme. If you’re a coach and your team reels off a dozen great games in a row, you’re going to be lauded. And if your team has a stretch where it can’t beat anybody, you’re going to hear whispers you’re about to be replaced. There’s never really a happy medium for coaches, so you can forgive Ruff if he’s grown tired of worrying about his job security.
You have to live in the moment if you’re a coach, and Ruff has to enjoy the ride – especially the pleasant ride as it stands right now. Father Time eventually shepherds in change, and if Ruff and the Sabres aren’t at least as successful as they were last season, the end could come for him before he’s fully prepared for it. But right now, Ruff deserves the ‘A’ for what he did last year.
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