When the NHL season came to an end, Sabres coach Lindy Ruff took his season’s worth of frustrations out on some of his players through the media. As you might expect, doing things that way didn’t exactly sit right with some of the guys in the room and, most pointedly, centerman Derek Roy took issue with his coach.
As the teams cleared out their lockers for the summer, Roy told John Vogl of The Buffalo News his thoughts on Ruff’s media outburst about his team.
“To be pointing fingers now is obviously tough,” said center Derek Roy in response to Ruff saying over the weekend the core didn’t get it done. “Behind closed doors, I think it’s fine. You can be hard. It’s not fun, but it’s good to be hard on your players behind closed doors, on the bench to get them pumped up. I’m not a coach, but I don’t think it’s the right thing to be saying it to the media.”
Airing your dirty laundry in public never goes over well and with how fragile the Sabres’ psyche was at times this year, it’s no surprise that someone took exception to this. For Roy, however, sounding off against Ruff might be his not-so-subtle way of nudging GM Darcy Regier to move him this summer.