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12 reasons to fire Ruff


PASabreFan

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One for each minute of Thomas Vanek's ice time.

 

An elite offensive talent gets 12 minutes of ice time in a near must-win, with the team begging for goals.

 

You have got to be kidding me.

 

Yeah, and Vanek rewarded him with no goals, 2 shots, and a -2.

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Yeah, and Vanek rewarded him with no goals, 2 shots, and a -2.

 

Well, which came first...

 

Not a big believer in sticking by your best player and letting him work things out and get into a game eh? Lindy would have had Gretzky nailed to the bench. #%^$#!ing hack.

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Well, which came first...

 

Not a big believer in sticking by your best player and letting him work things out and get into a game eh? Lindy would have had Gretzky nailed to the bench. #%^$#!ing hack.

 

Is he really the best player right now, because tonight, like a bunch of other guys, he looked like sh#t.

 

Maybe the obvious answer is that he's playing with an injury that is still hampering him, and Ruff knows it and is watching his ice time.

 

In any event, among others, Vanek was a passenger tonight, and considering his health issues, he's about as far away from Gretzky as a player could be.

 

But you probably knew that.

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Is he really the best player right now, because tonight, like a bunch of other guys, he looked like sh#t.

 

Maybe the obvious answer is that he's playing with an injury that is still hampering him, and Ruff knows it and is watching his ice time.

 

In any event, among others, Vanek was a passenger tonight, and considering his health issues, he's about as far away from Gretzky as a player could be.

 

But you probably knew that.

 

I'm not talking about just tonight. Look up Vanek's ice time numbers and tell me something isn't screwy about them. He's averaging only 11 seconds more per game of ice time than Hecht for example.

 

Last year he averaged in the 16 minute range. This year 17. It's just bizarre.

 

P.S. One more: Vanek is 95th in the league in ice time for forwards.

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I'm not talking about just tonight. Look up Vanek's ice time numbers and tell me something isn't screwy about them. He's averaging only 11 seconds more per game of ice time than Hecht for example.

 

Last year he averaged in the 16 minute range. This year 17. It's just bizarre.

 

P.S. One more: Vanek is 95th in the league in ice time for forwards.

 

It's not bizarre if his conditioning sucks.

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I doubt it, but who's fault would that be?

 

Uh, the player's?

 

You don't see this on TV much, but watch Vanek live, and you see that he looks really winded at the end of his shifts. Who knows if it's an Earl Campbell thing, or if he's really sucking wind after a 40 second shift.

 

No doubt Vanek is a talented player, but he's still young and he floats. Ruff has challenged him to be a better two-way player. To his credit, Vanek has taken up the challenge, but I can understand if Ruff is tougher on him when he begins to back-slide. Ruff is definitely working the short-term, long-term benefit thing with Vanek.

 

That doesn't mean that Ruff should put the whole carrot/stick thing on hold when the Sabres are fighting for their playoff lives, but unfortunately Vanek is now playing with a broken jaw, which is affecting his play and ice time.

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One for each minute of Thomas Vanek's ice time.

 

An elite offensive talent gets 12 minutes of ice time in a near must-win, with the team begging for goals.

 

You have got to be kidding me.

Maybe Vanek just isn't ready?

 

I hope we don't hear he was rushed back. If that is the case, everyone involved deserves to be fired.

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One for each minute of Thomas Vanek's ice time.

 

An elite offensive talent gets 12 minutes of ice time in a near must-win, with the team begging for goals.

 

You have got to be kidding me.

Can't take Mairsie's minutes away from him. <_< At some point Lindy needs to be told that he needs to ride his horses and nail the 4th line to the bench.

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really? come on wolf, how about too ?

:nana:

 

And you still missed the "of," in addition to the joke...

 

Anyway, onto the Vanek situation: I'm not that upset that he's out of condition; he couldn't get proper nutrition for a while, and then, he couldn't skate for a while. He also came back just about as early into his workout period as he could have (or is that "could of" :)), so I'm willing to cut him some slack. (No, that doesn't mean he was rushed back. It means he came back asap, without conditioning first.)

 

As for Ruff: He's been a great coach for this team for a long time. Put it this way: the iPod wasn't even a gleam in Steve Jobs's eye when Ruff became HC. During Ruff's tenure, we've seen three US presidents, the birth of eBay, four Sabres trips to the conference finals, evolution of fish to humans (sorry, Clobber!), a uniform change, a stock boom and a depression, countless new U2 albums, a new Canadian territory, Taro T's first and second trips to the moon, and just about everything else besides an amendment to the Constitution. Maybe the team is done listening to him. Perhaps it's time. (I mean for a coach, not a Constitutional amendment.)

 

Or perhaps not. No coach I've seen during that time (is it an epoch?) has done more with less than Ruff has. Frankly, I haven't seen too many GMs work out four trips to the conference finals on Regier's budget, either.

 

Last year sucked. This year isn't looking good. And the only two pieces of team hardware during the Ruff-Regier partnership are a Wales trophy and a Presidents' trophy (the latter of which, I think, is too easily discounted among hockey fans).

 

But this year, unlike last, the Sabres have the Miller injury. (And last year, unlike this, the Sabres had to deal with the loss of on-ice leaders.) Given the track record of R&R (I'm hesitant to use that abbreviation, because it will fuel the cynics, but what the hell), and given that they're crippled by this ball-and-chain that we know as Larry Quinn, maybe we should give them one more season. It really isn't every coach or GM that gets a team--a small market team, at that--into the "final four" one-third of the time. We could do a lot, lot worse; ask fans of "big market" teams like Chicago, NY, NY, LA, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, etc., how many times they've been in the conference finals or even the SC finals, during the R&R period in Buffalo, and how they feel about it. (Yeah, I know the other side of that argument, involving teams from Detroit and New Jersey.)

 

If it were up to me, I'd give Ruff and Regier another season (and I'd can Quinn). If for some reason Ruff were to go, well, there's a thread below this one, concerning a certain former Canadiens coach, that should give the Sabres a hint where to go next.

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I think they hurried Vanek back. He hasn't been skating as hard.

 

Agreed. Vanek has looked like garbage ever since coming back. He's just not ready. You gotta think him not eating properly has really effected him. He looks like he has no energy and no speed in his game.

 

Granted, when Vanek was out, the team struggled, but i thought one of our bright spots when he was out was MacArthur. It's a shame he's gotta ride the bench now.

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Darcy has to go first, I don't think any coach is going to be able to do what Ruff has with what Darcy has given him.

 

Fighting to make the playoffs and at the deadline you basically make a swap of mediocre forwards.

 

wow Moore looked very mediocre tonight, not that he was ever a big named player but I think that everyone felt good about a move being made to "make a move". This team lacks testicular fortitude.

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team's effort tonight deserves a big LOL

 

a. WHY IS LALIME STILL STARTING?? bad enough they robbed Tellqvist of his Ottawa start. then lindy throws him in when this game was LONG over with... cool?

b. another big LOL @ Afinogenov's "soccer-like" goal being the only offense we could get all game

c. i would REALLY love to know if the options of trading Hecht, Pominville, MacArthur, Paille, etc were ever actually explored before the deadline. and i only wonder because the jokinen/guerin/cole/schnieder trades seem to be workin out not so bad, but buffalo still just sucks.

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