“It Looks Like He’s Good” | Lindy Ruff On Zach Benson’s Return To Lineup | Buffalo Sabres

“It Looks Like He’s Good” | Lindy Ruff On Zach Benson’s Return To Lineup | Buffalo Sabres

You see Benson’s still out there? You going to be good to go? Yeah. Yeah, it looks like he’s good. What are you going to say? What you going to do with the league? Uh, no. I’m not going to talk about lineup. How’s Samson doing? Better. Uh, had a good uh skate this morning early. Uh, he’s in a better place. I wouldn’t rule out the weekend for him. Did you Ryan Johnson and Jacob Bryson seemed very effective early in Monday’s game. What did you like about them as a duo? Um, you know, I think to to be effective, you got to be predictable. Uh, just, you know, when you put a pair out like that, uh, just keep the game simple and and keep the puck going north. Is that what you expect from a third third pair a lot of the time? Yeah, a lot of time that’s what I mean they’re you’re looking for sometimes a little bit of special teams or you’re looking for um just consistent play that doesn’t put you in trouble. What do you expect from from Ottawa with without Brady in the lineup? Um you know I think again you’re you’re looking there there’s still enough skill there. I don’t think they’re looking at that as an excuse. Uh, every team is dealing with injuries. There’s a lot of teams dealing with injuries. They’re they’re looking for for scoring in other areas obviously. Wendy, how do you get Mloud to his game? He’s struggling. Uh, you know, I met with him yesterday. Um, got to get inside. That is the bottom line with our uh with our group. He’s got to get inside. Got to be more competitive on the inside. How about defensively? Defensively, same thing. It comes down to getting into people not good enough. When it comes to like the decision you’re weighing with Koulique or, you know, sending him the message yesterday, like how do you how do you pick your spots as a coach? How have you learned over the years? Like especially when you have probably a handful of guys that that aren’t going right that you could choose to send a message. How do you kind of pick your spots with that? Um, you know, you you meet with guys. I haven’t really met with Culie. Um, put them on that line to see what the reaction would be, how hard practice was going to be, how hard you’re going to work. Uh, other guys I’ve met with personally. Um, like I said, this isn’t about Kik. It um, and if you if you really want to know, he’s playing tonight. So, you liked his response to skating on that? No, I want to see his response tonight. Um, it’s not about one guy. We just mentioned Mloud. We We could mention Zucker, Mloud, talk. We We got lots of guys in that category. It’s not about one player. It’s not about Kik. Uh, I have met with those other guys. Um, I am going to talk, you know, I mean, we’ve had Seth has had conversations with colleague and, um, I’ve had conversations with lots of other guys about if we’re going to be better, we we need to we need we need to play faster and we need to get inside. Um, you know, our our defensive part of our game is good, our penalty killing is good, our offensive tenacity. uh if you just hit the uh the goals from last night around the league and you just watch goals, it’s more about tips and getting in front of the net. Uh it isn’t about pretty plays. You’re going to find 80% guys getting to the net and deflections and and plays that result in goals because pucks are bouncing around. The first period against Colorado, you got that from the Thompson line. They were around the crease the whole period and almost scored a couple of goals. How do you convince not only them but the guys, all right, we got that, but we need that for 60 minutes. Well, you know, again, we we were that I thought we were that, but our problem last year wasn’t scoring goals. Our problem was keeping it out of our net. We we built big leads in games. Um, it’s being a a consistent team. That’s part of being consistent. You got to just keep repeating. If you don’t get rewarded, you just got to keep repeating and eventually you’ll get rewarded for it. What do you need from your centers in particular, particularly with Ta moving to center on the top line? Uh, well, you know, I think we’ve struggled in the faceoff circle, I need, first of all, we need I mean, if I want to look at just one of the parts of their game is our faceoff percentage has got to go up. Uh, you know, if you look at a guy like Mloud, it was over 50% last year. I think he’s at 34% right now. Um, you know, you look at that difference that that amount of time that we have to spend chasing the puck around and then in the key areas if you’re losing that face off from penalty killing to power play, what a big difference that makes. Um, and then it’s the centerman has the biggest responsibility in our end or on any team’s end when it comes to defending. Um, and it’s just being in the right place when you’re defending. And his numbers weren’t great in the opener, but you’re feeling the absence of Norris faceoff wise in general, right? Yeah. Yeah. But other guys have to pick up the slack. Like a Mloud has to pick up the slack. Krebs has to be able to go in and take draws. I think the guy that you know the right-handed draw Danforth has done a has done a pretty good job through the preseason and through these games uh in the faceoff dot for us. How does the centerman work on that? Is it like studying other centermen and that’s part of it or is it just practicing it? No, that’s part of it. I you know I think you’ve got centermen in the league that’ll counter and block you out and use their feet. Um you’ve got to be aware of that. Um there’s there are guys that are just trying to win it just on on on pure quickness. So it it’s a combination of putting that, you know, it’s a study by by each centerman knowing that I’m going up against this guy. How’s he winning draws? How’s he taking draws? Um and you know, we started to get ourselves to a better place. I think we’re behind the eightball on that. Thanks,

Buffalo Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff spoke to the media ahead of a matchup with the Ottawa Senators on October 15, 2025. Ruff gave injury updates on Zach Benson and Mattias Samuelsson and discussed lineup decisions for the game. He also talked about what he’s expecting to see from his team in the game, including faceoff success and more offensive production.

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