{"id":771885,"date":"2026-05-04T04:59:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T04:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/771885\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T04:59:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T04:59:17","slug":"ruff-thinks-benson-knows-what-hes-doing-with-his-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/771885\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruff thinks Benson knows what he’s doing with his game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – <\/strong>After having Saturday off the Buffalo Sabres got back to work on Sunday. <\/p>\n

Lindy Ruff said he doesn\u2019t expect to have Sam Carrick or Noah Ostlund ready to play in this series. <\/p>\n

Zach Benson is quickly becoming the most hated player in the NHL. Charlie McAvoy will surely miss the beginning of next season thanks to him swinging his sticking a striking Benson in the head after the Sabres winger slew footed him to the ice. <\/p>\n

Ruff said even though Benson is only 20-years-old, he really doesn\u2019t have to teach him how to get under the skin of the opponent,<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s pretty damn good at it, I don\u2019t think I need to give him any guidance. I think the guidance over these couple of years has been not crossing the line, and not taking foolish penalties. I think there was a point last year where he took unnecessary penalties and I think he\u2019s realized that there\u2019s been times he\u2019s hurt the team and now he\u2019s got that part of his game in a real good place.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s drawing penalties, he\u2019s using his speed, he\u2019s been irritating people because of how hard he\u2019s been playing and when he has the puck he\u2019s a tough guy to get it away from too.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is it that Benson does that makes players hate him? Ruff said,<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest thing is he\u2019s just on the puck all the time, he\u2019s like that insect that won\u2019t go away, you can keep swatting at it, but you just can\u2019t quite get it.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Bennie\u2019 is on the puck as good as anybody on this team. I think him and Doan are two of the best and I think sometimes that can be really irritating to an opponent and the fact he is the first guy to get to net front and I think that alone irritates a lot of the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as what McAvoy did to him, Benson said,<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously you don\u2019t want to be slashed, I was just playing to the last whistle and it happens in the game of hockey and you move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benson pretty much said don\u2019t give him too much credit for being a pest. He wants to credit others,<\/p>\n

\u201cI think our line can be a pain to play against and nothing to do with chirping or anything, it just comes down to battle, compete and I think \u2018Doaner\u2019s\u2019 so good at picking guys pockets that can be frustrating over six games and it\u2019s never fun to play against guys that compete and battle every shift like our group did all series.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benson needed some time to get his offense going because he came into the NHL at 18. The offense has finally started to come as he has two goals in six playoff games and in his last 36 games in the regular season he netted nine goals and 17 assists for 26 points. Benson said,<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it was something that clicked, but it\u2019s been fun playing with different linemates and we have a lot of elite players in this room, so the more success the team has, the more personal success guys within the team have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Lyon has been on a roll in the playoffs. He\u2019s 3-1 with a 1.14 goals against and .955 save percentage which is second in the playoffs to Freddie Andersen of the Carolina Hurricanes. Lyon now has to go from Friday until Wednesday without playing a game, but he\u2019s not at all worried about losing his momentum,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt think it\u2019s good for everybody, a physical reset and an emotional reset, probably more importantly mentally.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re in the series it\u2019s hard to see from a third party perspective, but now we can just take a deep breath and get our bearings about us again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lyon of course was going to watch Game 7 on Sunday because the Sabres now play the winner the Montreal Canadiens who despite being outshot 29-9, beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1. The Canadians are not going to head back to Montreal as they’re coming straight to Buffalo to get ready for Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Ruff wants to continue every other day on the ice, so he\u2019s going to keep them off the ice on Monday and then have them practice on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – After having Saturday off the Buffalo Sabres got back to work on Sunday.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":771886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[1720,293264,293,62,56389,67,132,68,289120,316454],"class_list":{"0":"post-771885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-buffalo-sabres","9":"tag-lindy-ruff","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-wgr","17":"tag-zach-benson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116514545187507608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}