New Jersey Devils: Continue To Confuse Fanbase With Lindy Ruff Hiring

OTTAWA, ON - NOVEMBER 3: Head coach Lindy Ruff of the Dallas Stars talks to the media following their shoot-out win against the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre on November 3, 2013 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Jana Chytilova/Freestyle Photography/Getty Images)
OTTAWA, ON - NOVEMBER 3: Head coach Lindy Ruff of the Dallas Stars talks to the media following their shoot-out win against the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre on November 3, 2013 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Jana Chytilova/Freestyle Photography/Getty Images)

The New Jersey Devils have made a terrible coaching hire in Lindy Ruff and it is yet another confusing move for this organization.

The New Jersey Devils have made a string of bad decisions over the past few years. They have gotten lucky in the draft lottery twice and have to very special players as a result but they need to surround them with winning culture and it hasn’t happened with any sort of regularity yet. Well, Wednesday’s news hasn’t made that seem any more likely to happen any time soon. Kevin Weekes was first to report on Twitter that they are going to hire Lindy Ruff to be their head coach.

With no disrespect to Lindy Ruff, this seems like a disaster of an idea. He hasn’t seen his teams be very good defensively in a long time but now we just have to hope that it can change. It just seems at the surface of the hire, to be less than ideal. When guys like Gerard Gallant and Bruce Boudreau are available, this seems to be a very confusing hire.

Lindy Ruff has had a bit of success as an NHL coach, despite this looking like a bad hire. He was the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres when they had their controversial defeat in the 1999 Stanley Cup Final. He would go on to be their coach all the way through some of the 2013 season, which ended his reign of being the longest-tenured coach in the NHL.

Ruff also had some time with the Dallas Stars where he helped guys like Tyler Seguin and Jamie
Benn reach their true potential. They were pretty good under him offensively as a team but the defending was a big question. Hopefully, he can bring some of that to the young guys on the Devils like Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes. With that said, hopefully, they can defend a little bit better in New Jersey than they did in Dallas.

Hot. Hoping for an 82 game schedule for the New Jersey Devils. light

This is definitely a weird hire but it seems to be what we have to accept right now. This team has been bad for a while now so hopefully, they prove us all wrong but this isn’t a great start. The coaching is so important with this young of a group so this is a big announcement.