It seems like everyone’s got something to say in the series between Buffalo and Philadelphia. Ryan Miller has been busy chirping not only the media but his old friend and teammate Daniel Briere. Briere has been saving his shots for the officials after a Game 4 loss to Buffalo. Now you can add Sabres coach Lindy Ruff and Flyers captain Mike Richards to the list of combative speakers.
Earlier today, Ruff spoke out to the media and blew up about how the Flyers were upset about the five-minute major given to captain Mike Richards for elbowing Patrick Kaleta and Ruff is frankly tired of hearing about.
Given that Lindy Ruff strikes us as the sort of guy that doesn’t have a high tolerance for complaining in the first place, hearing him snap off today doesn’t surprise us in the least.“I just feel that they’re doing a lot of whining,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said at his Thursday press conference. “They’re really doing a lot of whining.
“I didn’t hear any whining when they had 10 power plays in Philly, and I didn’t hear any whining when the power plays in the first game were lopsided. But all of a sudden there’s all this whining about, ‘We’re getting away with murder.’
“That’s a bunch of crap. That’s for the media. That’s for the officials to read. That’s, ‘Here, let’s get the next call.’ That’s a bunch of crap. Let’s just play.”
Simmer down now big Lindy, Mike Richards had a few words of his own he wanted to get off his chest about what you said. Consider hostilities to be elevated between these two.
“That’s fine, that’s fine, we’re focused on tomorrow night,” Richards said of Ruff’s remark. “He seems to have a way with the media.
“He does this, I think, every time they’re in the playoffs. We’re just focused on tomorrow night, getting a good start and getting our licks in on some of their good players and not worry about the other stuff.”
Shots fired and shots returned.
The craziest part of all this is that both sides have a point. Everyone is politicking to get things to go their way and in this series, both teams have been running afoul of the rules a lot. The Sabres have been hit for 30 penalties so far in the playoffs, tied with Anaheim for most in the playoffs. Philadelphia isn’t too far behind them with 28 penalties of their own.
The problem for Philly has been they’ve been poor at converting on the power play scoring just 9.5% of the time while the Sabres have had a lot more success comparatively scoring on 15.8% of their power plays. Those marks aren’t outstanding given the sample size of games in the playoffs, but they’ve been giving each other enough opportunities to score while up a man (or two) that both sides should probably just shut up and play.
