HITCHCOCK, RUFF BURY THE HATCHET
Opposing coaches talking nice before Blues-Stars semifinal series
They got off to a bad start, Ken Hitchcock and Lindy Ruff, opposing coaches in the 1999 Stanley Cup final; two guys left to rationalize the chaotic ending to one of the Cup’s great trench wars.
Ruff, coaching Buffalo, was livid at the way his Sabres lost — at home, in triple overtime, on a goal by Brett Hull that, according to the rules of the day, ought not to have counted.
Hitchcock, proud of an aging Dallas team that, by the end, was running on fumes and grit, sore about being asked, essentially, to apologize for the circumstances of the Stars’ championship, fired back at Ruff’s allegation that Dallas’s win was tainted by league incompetence.
“Tell Lindy to f--- off,” Hitchcock spat as he vacated the postgame podium.
Time, though, and a couple of Canadian Olympic team assignments as assistant coaches under Mike Babcock threw the two of them together and grew a scab over the old cut.
But that deep a wound never entirely heals, and now — Ruff coaching Dallas, Hitchcock with St. Louis, on opposite benches for the West semifinal series that opens Friday night in the Big D — it’s certain to reopen over the next week or two as their teams’ enmity inevitably blossoms.
Hitchcock, who cut his hockey teeth coaching midget teams and working in a sports and cycle shop in Edmonton while Ruff was growing up in the village of Warburg, 90 kilometres away, had no new material to lay on Ruff when quizzed about him by the St. Louis media this week.
“No, I said enough in two Olympics, too much,” said the Blues coach. “We had a rough start with the Stanley Cup final there and smoothed it over. We became good friends through two Olympic Games. Being roommates for 2½ weeks, you get to know a lot about a guy.”
Ruff, who can be as taciturn as Hitchcock is voluble, allowed this much about their Olympic experiences.
“I learned a lot ... learned actually at the end to like him,” Ruff said, as if that were a thing he wouldn’t have believed possible. “He’s a good coach. Matchups are going to be tough, details are going to be tough. There’s a reason he’s coached so long.”
Hitchcock might say the same. Ruff was beginning to look like a lifer in Buffalo until the Sabres fired him and the Stars quickly snapped him up in 2013. Dallas is just his second NHL head coaching gig. Hitchcock has bounced around some, from Philadelphia as an assistant to Dallas, back to Philly, to Columbus and now to St. Louis, with a couple of stints of “between jobs” thrown into the mix.
Ruff’s Sabres eliminated Hitchcock’s Flyers in the first round in 2006, the last time they met in the playoffs.
But they coached and roomed together in 2010 and 2014 — “We had a lot of dialogue under a lot of very stressful pressure situations. I thought both of us leaned on each other pretty hard to help Team Canada through stuff,” said Hitchcock — so there’s a good deal of mutual respect, though their teams are nearly polar opposites.
Hitchcock is a buttoned-down, defence-first guy and more than once his teams have run out of gas in the playoffs after grinding out 82 games. Ruff, at least in his Dallas incarnation, finds himself with a wealth of offensive talent (though not as much as if Tyler Seguin were healthy) and the Stars are more willing to trade chances.
“For me, Lindy’s always been more of a risk-taker. His teams in Buffalo, they played with a high level of risk. And then obviously you learn over time to coach through balance,” Hitchcock said.
It wasn’t a shot, exactly, but it might read that way to Ruff, as if he had to learn how to be good at coaching.
He was certainly hot enough after that 1999 Stanley Cup final to last the full 17 years since.
Hull’s goal, scored with one skate fully in Dominik Hasek’s crease, touched off one of the most sensational hockey controversies ever. Ruff stormed back to the ice surface after he had seen the replay to demand an explanation from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, but the rink was already being overrun by TV people, photographers and support staff for the Cup presentation and Ruff’s protest fell on deaf ears.
“I wanted Bettman to answer the question, why is that not reviewed? And really he just turned his back on me,” said Ruff. “He almost looked to me like this might be a tainted goal and there was no answer to it.”
But that was then. He has buried that memory, or tried to, and while he and Hitchcock are still tied 0-0 in this series, all is sweetness and light.
It might not last. Hitchcock, who returns to Dallas this time as the enemy, has more than enough command of the language to land punches even while seeming to be diplomatic. He got so deeply under the skin of Tampa’s John Tortorella in 2004, Flyers GM Bobby Clarke eventually had to intercede with the now famous: “Ah, the great Tortellini. There are no mirrors in his house.”
Ruff, too, can drip sarcasm when aroused.
So if the main event is in the ring, keep an eye on the corner men. They may have something to say about this.