“Gutsy Effort” | Lindy Ruff After 3-2 Win Over The Vancouver Canucks | Buffalo Sabres

“Gutsy Effort” | Lindy Ruff After 3-2 Win Over The Vancouver Canucks | Buffalo Sabres

for a bunch of reasons. It seemed like one of the most complete road games of the year. Is that how you saw it? Uh gutsy effort. Uh you know, with you know, you had one guy miss had to be pulled out of the game in warm-up because he’s sick with another guy that played sick. Um so I think to get that effort to fight back down the game, you know, fight back, score a big power play goal. And I just thought uh the block shots at the end, incredible desperation. Uh the block by Greenie, the the block by Kak. Uh uh everybody was all invested in trying to win that game. A few guys in there were talking about the idea that it’s felt like a must-win almost like they’re kind of treating it that way. Did you sense that for guys? Yeah. Uh you know, we we got a chance to finish this road trip 500 now. We knew that we got to start playing. We got to start winning games on the road. Um, I thought the bench had life. The, you know, just being invested in the game. The bench was up on every block shot, on every hit. Uh, on the good plays. Um, it was a night we knew we were going to need a special effort, some big saves. We going to need some big blocks. Uh, you know, after giving up the power play goal, we got a big kill. And then, uh, we fought back and scored a big power play goal by Benson. When was the decision made to take Alex Tuck out of the game? skated this morning but wasn’t in warm-ups. Uh he was there for warm-up for a little bit. Um he wanted to try um he was sick all day. Um you know he dressed in a different room. He he went out for maybe two minutes and came off. Only a few minutes for Countar sometimes just bring the guys energy to see a guy come up and debut. Yeah. just I decided at one point to go down to three lines uh you know try to get a little bit of rhythm and I like the shift so I thought he finished bodies hard he competed hard in the puck I think a lot of times winning on the road isn’t about skill um it’s about the it’s about the compete the the real hard compete I thought every time I put him on his on the ice the the compete was was good uh you know and for the first NHL game u whether you play a minute or 10 minutes um you’ve put your skates on and you’ve got to where you want to be as a kid and congrats for him. What do you think of Zach? Finally getting on the Yeah. Well, I mean, great play. Um you know, we needed our power play to come up for us and uh the power play this really u you know, last 10 12 games has been has been real good. Has scored a lot of big goals for us and uh if we’re going to fight our way back into it, we’re going to we’re going to need it to continue. But I thought he put himself in a great position there. We we found the hole when we went down low and and he buried it behind those block shots that desperation Alex lacks. Yeah, fabulous. Uh same type of I mean he was totally invested. Um you know if you watch the the end where you know he’s he went across to make a save and the net’s wide open. We got Greenway and we got Dolly and Greenway’s block and then followed up by Kak’s block that ends up in the neutral zone. Um, that’s the stuff that puts a smile on your face.

Buffalo Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff spoke to the media after a 3-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks on December 11, 2025. Ruff talked about the team’s defensive efforts in this game, blocking 28 shots and shutting down the Canucks offense late in the third period. He talked about the play of Alex Lyon and also Trevor Kuntar who made his NHL debut in this game.

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