“We Fought For Everything Tonight” | Lindy Ruff After 8-4 Win Over Senators | Buffalo Sabres

“We Fought For Everything Tonight” | Lindy Ruff After 8-4 Win Over Senators | Buffalo Sabres

Yeah, you know, I think you you look at opportunities, you look at breaks, you look at pucks bouncing in like you need something like that. I think that at that time was the break we needed. Responsive in this game. You guys responded to the goalie interference craziness. You responded to the two goals in the third period. It just didn’t like your guys were going to allow themselves to get beaten. No, you got to give him a lot of credit. I thought, you know, you mentioned a couple big moments in the game. The uh you know, the goal, the challenge, and then the killers going out to kill it. Um big scrum in front of their bench I thought gave us a lot of life. Five guys in on that. Uh you know, to kill it and then end up getting a short-handed goal. Uh I thought we showed a lot of life. We showed a lot of passion. Time out was simply just you still got the lead. Calm down. Was to We got to want the puck. We We We were doing, you know, a real good job of playing quick and having the puck. It I just sense we were we didn’t want to make a play with it. And I said, “We’re going to have we got a lot of time left off. We got to make plays. We got to we got to want the puck and we got to make plays.” Um special teams, the power play and the power kill or the penalty kill. um both something you you’ve been emphasizing for a couple weeks now. Uh what was it like to see those really flourish tonight? Uh it I mean it was really important. I mean power play when you get that number you you’ve got to get one or two and uh we struggled on it for sure in the first three. We’ve had opportunities. Um we got the break. I think we got a break on another one off uh sucker. Uh but when you get pucks to the net, good things happen. Uh, you know, I think we were deferring to the the nicer plays. The mentality was start getting more pucks in the net and I think we got rewarded for that. The killing the killing has been, knock on wood, it’s been pretty solid. We’ve got we got a lot we’ve got a lot of good kills and we’re going to need that to win hockey games. Goal really the the place where the building got energized. you guys got energized because you guys worked hard to get that short-handed goal and it just seemed like the building went nuts and it seems seemed everything got energized because Yeah, you know, I think we we fed off the energy. You know, the building came to life, the you know, upset about the, you know, the goal that they allowed and then all of a sudden you start killing one off and you get a short-handed one at, you know, it’s like the fans version of let’s stick it to you. Lindy, when you look at the sum of all parts tonight, what did this team do that made it successful and helped it get its first win of the season? Um, we we took a big step of playing the game a lot faster where, you know, I think we deferred to slower plays. You know, there’s a couple plays early in the first period that, you know, I can mention we we again, we didn’t get pucks to the net. You know, we have an oddnumbered rush. We we don’t get a puck to the net. We had a couple ozone plays where both times our defense deferred to trying to stick handle and and do something different. Uh the message was, you know, we we got to make plays, but we got to get pucks going to the net, too. What did you think of Yuri’s response? You started him on the fourth line as a winner, I guess, but you moved him up later. What did you think? I I thought his game was okay. I He’s got more there. Uh I haven’t seen the the Yuri that really, you know, skates himself out of the zone. I think he had some puck plays that normally he would skate it. He needs just to grab a hold of his confidence just a little bit and then put a little put a little pizzazz in his game where this is my puck and I’m going to I I’m going to get it and I’m going to carry the mail. Feeling that the season can start now. There’s been a lot of noise around this team the last couple days and how you needed to get that first win. Well, I think, you know, I’m not going to make excuses, but we’ve been we’ve been hit hard with injuries. U you know, getting Benson back was a big plus. I think we all saw that tonight. What what a difference it made for us. Um that’s getting one player back. U you know, we’ll we’ll be better when we get, you know, we get one or two of our D back. We’ll be we’ll be a better team then, too. But you still have to fight your way through tough parts of the season. Um, our fight wasn’t good enough in the first three games. I don’t care whether we’re hurt or not. We didn’t earn enough. We didn’t deserve enough. And we didn’t fight enough. I thought tonight we fought for everything we got. I loved his game. He’s on the puck. He’s um fearless. Made some good plays. Um, we’ve seen a lot of good things out of him. I I thought tonight might have been his best night.

Buffalo Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff spoke to the media after an 8-4 win over the Ottawa Senators on October 15, 2025. Ruff discussed what led to the strong offensive performance from the team and the success they had on the power play. He also talked about Ryan McLeod who scored twice in win and Zach Benson who made his season debut.

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