Lindy Ruff was always a soft coach with soft teams. He might have been hard on his players trying to put round pegs into triangle holes building a team of all jochen hechts, but players started tuning him out decades ago.
The Ottawa incident was an aberration and revises everyone's memory of Ruff (that was almost 20 years ago!). Ruff was notorious for "taking the powerplay" or "letting the league handle it". I remember things like lucic stomping a hole in Miller, and Scott Gomez getting away with purposely injuring Miller too.
I remember everyone wanting him out in the early 2000s. Almost a quarter century ago, yet here he is. Ah, the life of a sabres fan.