{"id":590902,"date":"2026-06-04T09:36:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T09:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/590902\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T09:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T09:36:30","slug":"sabres-lindy-ruff-snubbed-by-wild-nhl-coach-of-the-year-decision-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/590902\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabres’ Lindy Ruff snubbed by wild NHL Coach of the Year decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sabres’ Lindy Ruff snubbed by wild NHL Coach of the Year decision<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jon Cooper and the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> had a solid season.<\/p>\n

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Cooper has been a great coach for a long time, too.<\/p>\n

But did he deserve to win the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s top coach for the entire season?<\/p>\n

It sure is easy to make the case that the award belonged to Buffalo Sabres<\/a> head coach Lindy Ruff.<\/p>\n

The Sabres were in last place in the Eastern Conference on Dec. 8, then went on to have the second-most points in the East and make the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Max Domi’s surgery had something go ‘terribly wrong’<\/a><\/p>\n

Some might question with every team how much the head coach actually matters relative to the front office and the players.<\/p>\n

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But it’s hard to look at the Sabres and think Ruff didn’t do plenty to deserve this award.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Canucks make Gavin McKenna decision that Maple Leafs, Sharks don’t make<\/a><\/p>\n

The other reality here is that it doesn’t really\u00a0matter. Ruff surely isn’t losing sleep over this. He’d probably congratulate Cooper graciously.<\/p>\n

But in Buffalo, Ruff led the Sabres to the kind of season they hadn’t had in more than a decade, and he did it by helping them out of the absolute dumps in early December.<\/p>\n

It’s tough to make a case for Coach of the Year that beats that.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabres’ Lindy Ruff snubbed by wild NHL Coach of the Year decision originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,894,2217,5,7943,2086,6422,20,890,4,1108,92],"class_list":["post-590902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-buffalo-sabres","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-buffalosabres","tag-canucks","tag-eastern-conference","tag-hockey","tag-jack-adams-award","tag-jon-cooper","tag-lindy-ruff","tag-maple-leafs","tag-max-domi","tag-nhl","tag-sabres","tag-tampa-bay-lightning"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116691165750921539","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}