Reiger does suck and is significant part of the problem with the team, but Ruff certainly has his share of the problem. There is currently no leadership on the team, and leadership is the only reason that the Sabres had seasons where they did as well as they did. That is squarely Reiger’s fault. Ruff has never been able to motivate players though. Even back during the President’s trophy season, every game would have a stretch of 10 minutes to 2 periods where the Sabres just did not try, and then Drury and Briere would then chose to step up their play and the rest of the team followed. Ruff plays a system that is high risk and doesn’t adapt to how the other team is playing. How often has the Sabres tried to stickhandle over the blue line to a team that is just lining up on the blue line and poke checking the puck away from us or checking the player just enough for us to lose control? Why do they chose to dump and chase against teams that just beat us to every puck when we do that? Why has Ruff allowed Tyler Myers to continue to play like he wants to be Brian Campbell when a guy his size should be groomed to be the next Zdeno Chara? Why continue to push for pinching d-men when our defense has been the weakest part of our team? Why do we force a stretch pass when the other team’s defense is already set up to prevent it from doing much? Why does the defense constantly stop playing the body on the man in front of the net if the other team gets sustained pressure in the Sabres zone? Why does no one on our team sacrifice the body to block a shot anymore?
Many of the issues I’ve seen are not new, but have been going on for seasons. They only now are all biting us as hard they could have been all along. One of the things I always loved about the Sabres growing up with them was that even when they were bad, they left everything on the ice every game. I haven’t felt that way about our team since the 2004–05 lockout. Lack of motivation is coaching. Game plan is coaching. The lack of leadership on the team is Reiger and his stupid as fuck rule of not talking contracts during the season. We had Drury and Briere walk out because of Reiger’s dumb ass policy. We haven’t pursued a real leader for the team since they left. However, choosing the captain and assistants is the coach. Do you really think a streaky, party boy like Stafford should ever be considered a leader?
Ruff had benefited before on players who were great leaders on sub-par teams. I’m not trying to take all the credit from Ruff, I would say he was a necessary guiding hand on those teams, and we played above expectations because of it. It is very obvious that Ruff cannot coach a team without players who are naturally great leaders though. The time has more than come for this team to be shaken up and a new coach to try his hand at turning this team around to make some progress.
Time for the fans to start calling for Reiger’s head now, though both should have been axed together.
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