Lindy Ruff

Lindy Ruff (Born: February 17, 1960 in Warburg, Alberta, Canada) is a Canadian head coach and former defenseman in the National Hockey League. As a player, he was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft, Second Round, Thirty-Second Overall. He played for the Buffalo Sabres and New York Rangers.

He became assistant coach of the Florida Panthers for the 1993-94 NHL season until the 1996-97 NHL season. His best success then was with the 1996 Florida Panthers, who made the Stanley Cup Finals. He then became head coach of the Buffalo Sabres before the 1997-98 NHL season where he has been since. In Ruff's second season as coach, the Sabres reached the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals before finally losing to the Dallas Stars in six games. Ruff is currently the longest-tenured coach in the NHL.

On April 5, 2006, Ruff became the 31st coach in NHL history to win 300 games, and just the 16th to do it with only one team. Ruff led the Sabres to their most successful regular season ever in 2005-2006.

Ruff was the winner of the 2005-06 Jack Adams Award for coach of the year in the National Hockey League. Tom Renney of the New York Rangers and Peter Laviolette of the Carolina Hurricanes were also nominated.

Ruff is known for being blunt with the media. One well-known example of his bluntness is his comments on Leafs player Darcy Tucker. In his postgame comments following a questionable hit on Jochen Hecht that knocked the Sabres centre out of the lineup for two weeks with a sprained ACL, Ruff said, "I want him [Tucker] suspended." He also said, "I have not called the NHL office all year and I will call them ten times tomorrow." He called Tucker's hit "a defintion of a joke."