Let’s get this out of the way: Jon Cooper is one hell of a coach, an all-time great. Having won the Stanley Cup twice and taken the Tampa Bay Lightning to the final on two other occasions, he will deservedly be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame someday.
Despite the absence of stud defenseman Victor Hedman for most of this season, he led the Lightning to 50 wins and 106 points.
Still, Cooper had no business winning the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year over the Buffalo Sabres’ Lindy Ruff. Zero.
Ruff’s work transforming the Sabres into a powerhouse ranks as one of the best coaching jobs in recent memory.
A team that ranked last in the Eastern Conference in early December enjoyed one of the most stunning in-season turnarounds in NHL history and finished on a 39-9-5 tear, winning the Atlantic Division and ending a league-record 14-year playoff drought.
Ruff, remember, guided the Sabres, one of the NHL’s youngest teams, as captain Rasmus Dahlin handled his fiancée’s illness and occasionally missed games to visit her in Sweden.
He led a group that had never experienced any notable success together through the great unknown as they became a target each night down the stretch.
In the process, the Sabres never let up, morphing into a tight-knit team that took pride in being one of the league’s best ensembles. Everyone seemed to buy into what Ruff and his staff preached.
Revamping the culture of a team mired in the greatest stretch of futility in NHL history will be remembered as one of the greatest accomplishments in Ruff’s distinguished coaching career.
When the Sabres began their 10-game win streak on Dec. 9, they trailed the Lightning by eight points in the division. When the Sabres began their eight-game win streak on Feb. 25 following the Olympic break, they trailed the first-place Lightning by eight points.