BUFFALO, N.Y. — Lindy Ruff's second stint as the Sabres head coach is officially underway.
Ruff leading this team on the ice for the first time Wednesday morning as training camp got underway.
"I’m just thinking about let’s have one heck of a practice, really," Ruff said when asked afterwards what was going through his mind. "Looking around at some of the size. Watching some of the speed, even just those opening laps. Later on in practice the ice was pretty bad and it didn’t look quite as good, but to start, I’d say it was a good feeling just getting back out.”
His return to the blue and gold has been quite a feel good story.
Ruff's the franchise's winningest head coach with 571 victories over 15 seasons.
He is the last head coach to lead the Sabres into the postseason.
However, Ruff has moved on from the nostalgia of his return.
"It’s just work right now, really," Ruff said. "Moved on from that point and making sure that we’re trying to cover off almost every detail so we put ourselves in a great place to be where we want to be at the end of the year.”
We already saw part of what Ruff is hoped to bring to this team: accountability.
He stopped practice multiple times this morning when a drill wasn't executed properly.
"No bad habits," Ruff explained. "Whether that’s using your hand in some of the d-zone. The obvious is if we’re going to see a penalty, I’m going to stop the play. We’re going to have good habits. The one thing I don’t like, I don’t like careless penalties. It’s one thing that we get to control.”
"Accountability’s all about habits and you can’t let anything go," Sabres forward Tage Thompson said. "I think you let one thing go, then you let another one go and that starts to devleop into bad habits and obviously he blew it down right there right away.”
That wasn't the only noticeable difference from what we saw from the Sabres throughout their first practice of camp.
The pace and intensity also taken up a notch out the gate.
"About halfway through, you look up at the clock about 25 minutes in, you’re like this is going to be a long day, but then once you get into the second half, you’re starting to feel it," Sabres forward Alex Tuch said. "Everyone’s starting to move. I thought, as you can see, it got a little louder. Got a little bit more aggressive. Guys were competing a little bit more. At the beginning we were just skating, so it was good. I thought that second half was really good and I thought everyone brought it today, including Lindy.”
The Sabres continue training camp Thursday morning at KeyBank Center.