Devils Fire Head Coach Lindy Ruff
On Monday, the New Jersey Devils announced the firing of head coach Lindy Ruff. Ruff was in the midst of the fourth season of his Devils coaching tenure, which included a trip to the playoffs in 2023. Ruff’s 2022-2023 team, led by young phenom Jack Hughes, beat the New York Rangers in the first round before falling to the Carolina Hurricanes in the second round in Ruff’s only playoff appearance as the Devils head man. In fact, Ruff did such an excellent job with the 2023 team that he ended up as a finalist for the Jack Adams Award for the NHL’s Coach of the Year.
However, after coming off the encouraging season last year, the expectations for New Jersey this year were quite high, and rightfully so, given the young talent that is littered throughout the roster. While high expectations are often seen as a good thing in sports, they can quickly turn into a death wish if the team underperforms, and this is precisely what has happened with the Devils so far this season. New Jersey currently has a record of 30-27-4, which puts them at sixth in the Metropolitan Division and eight points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for the last Eastern Conference Wild Card spot. There is still over a month left in the regular season for New Jersey to make a run at the playoffs, but it is clear that what they were doing needed to be fixed. So, someone had to take the fall, and that someone happened to be Lindy Ruff.
Ruff’s replacement for the rest of the season will be Travis Green. Green spent time as the Vancouver Canucks head coach for parts of five seasons from 2017-2021. He was able to lead the Canucks to the playoffs one time in 2021. Green will serve in the interim role, but General Manager Tom Fitzgerald has confidence that Green has what it takes to turn the team around down the stretch, “He (Green) is a high-demanding individual who is familiar with the group and excited about working to get us back on track,” Fitzgerald explained at a press conference on Monday. Green will make his Devils head coaching debut on Tuesday night at home against the Florida Panthers.
