Let's start with this: The Jack Adams Award is not an honor bestowed for lifetime achievement. What happened over the previous decade doesn't matter. It's a trophy given to the NHL's Coach of the Year this season. Plain and simple.
For the 2025-26 campaign, that's Buffalo Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff. Period.
Yet, for some reason, there's been a push in recent weeks to give the award to Jon Cooper of the Tampa Bay Lightning. It continued Monday with a poll conducted by ESPN's Greg Wyshynski, though the argument remains borderline laughable.
"There are two right answers here — Cooper and Lindy Ruff. Tie goes to the runner because it's an atrocity that Cooper hasn't won this award yet," an unnamed voter told Wyshynski. "It's like when Leo DiCaprio got his Oscar for 'The Revenant' — not his actual best performance but you could simply not deny the man any longer."
What?
Listen, Cooper deserves his fair share of credit for helping the Lightning navigate a series of key injuries to remain near the top of the Eastern Conference. It also helps to have Nikita Kucherov, who ranks second in the NHL with 130 points, and the league's best goalie in Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Ruff, who also juggled no shortage of injuries throughout the campaign, led the Sabres from the bottom of the East on the morning of Dec. 9 to the conference's No. 2 seed in the playoffs with no Art Ross or Vezina Trophy front-runners on his roster.
If there was any lingering debate about the clear Jack Adams favorite, it should have ended Monday night when Buffalo clinched the Atlantic Division title over Tampa Bay. The Bolts finishing atop the division standings was the last avenue to an argument for Cooper. It's now gone.
Handing the award to the longtime leader of Tampa's coaching staff just because he didn't win it in the past, when he probably deserved it, would be an injustice. That's not how voting should work.
Hopefully common sense prevails to yield Ruff his second Jack Adams trophy. His first came with the Sabres back in 2006, which would represent the longest gap between winning the award in NHL history.
Taking a team that entered the season with serious questions about its scoring depth, defensive aptitude and goaltending stability to fourth place in the NHL standings with 108 points is a remarkable accomplishment. One that undoubtedly deserves to get recognized with the league's highest coaching honor.
Give Cooper his lifetime achievement consolation prize another year.
Questions remain about Lindy Ruff's Buffalo Sabres coaching future ahead of team's long-awaited playoff return
Ruff's contract is set to expire at season's end. Although there's been some speculation about the 66-year-old Canadian potentially retiring from coaching and taking on a less strenuous executive role, it doesn't sound like that's on his mind at the moment.
In a recent interview with NHL insider Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, the former Sabres player and current coach discussed the staff's "just one more" mindset and circled back to that phrase when asked about his future, hinting he'd like to remain in the role for a bit longer.
"When we get to that 'Just one more,' we'll see if it's just one," Ruff said.
Buffalo general manager Jarmo Kekalainen, who made it clear after taking over the front office in December that everyone would be evaluated for the remainder of the campaign, declined to comment when asked about a potential contract extension for Ruff by Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic, saying it's merely his stance to never comment on personnel matters.
Although there's no indication Kekalainen wants to move on from Ruff, even if he did, it's hard to imagine team owner Terry Pegula would sign off on such a decision given what's transpired over the past four months in terms of reversing the Sabres' fortunes.
Pegula struggled with the decision to fire Ruff the first time (in February 2013 during the early stages of what became a record-setting 14-year playoff drought), so it's hard to imagine he'd do it again when the Blue and Gold finally put that misery behind them.
Ruff, by leading the unexpected turnaround this season, has also earned the right to remain behind the bench for at least a few more years if that's his choice.
A short-term extension, perhaps another two seasons, makes the most sense for both sides.
The one possible caveat? A Stanley Cup title.
It's the one thing Ruff hasn't accomplished during a lifetime of hockey and, if the Sabres can overcome a loaded Eastern Conference en route to a championship in the months ahead, there's a real chance the Buffalo fan favorite could opt to retire on the ultimate high note.
His group isn't the favorite — HockeyStats.com gives the club a 6% chance to raise the Cup, which is tied for the NHL's seventh-best odds — but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Beyond a championship parade in downtown Buffalo, however, expect to see Ruff back behind the Sabres bench in 2026-27 despite the continued uncertainty about his contract status.
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