Ruff was joking afterward, of course, about having the game played in Montreal. At the same time, he’s not naive nor stubborn enough to ignore how much better his team has been on the road than at home, where they’ve gone 2-4 this postseason.
Ruff shrugs his shoulders when asked why there is such a disparity between his team’s performances in KeyBank Center as opposed to away from it. His goal: to replicate the road conditions, on and off the ice, heading into their biggest home game in 15 years, the length of Buffalo’s playoff draught until this spring.
“We’re still in that process, but we are going to try to change up the routine a little bit,” Ruff said.
When asked by NHL.com if that included having his team stay in a hotel Sunday night rather than the comfort of their own beds, Ruff replied: “Yeah, we’re considering a lot of stuff. That is one of them, for sure.”
To that end, Ruff is relying on some of the intel he accrued during the previous Game 7 he coached in, a 4-0 victory by his New Jersey Devils against the rival New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference First Round on May 1, 2023.
“My last one was in Jersey, Game 7 against the Rangers,” he said. “I took a similar approach I did to Game 6 here where I kept them away from the rink and just brought them in just in time for the game. Because I think everybody realizes, you feel that pressure. I mean, we feel it and you got to imagine how they feel.
“We’ve gotten a great number of players that have never experienced it. But our group has got to a point where I believe that this is just another opportunity for our group and prove who we can be.”
