Coach(es) Of The Decade

I know that in sports "winning is everything", but how can one not be impressed with what both Lindy Ruff of the Buffalo Sabres and Barry Trotz of the Nashville Predators have done with their respective teams. Both coaches are with teams who never spend to the salary cap maximum, yet always seem to get the most out of their players. Both teams have suffered through players leaving due to the inability to sign them to the long, lucrative contracts they were seeking (i.e. Drury, Briere, Vokoun, Radulov), and yet again, always manage to make noise during the regular season and playoffs. Now, it's obvious that both teams upper management do an amazing job at scouting and keeping the young talent coming through great drafting (i.e. Miller, Rinne, Ellis, Weber, Suter, Myers, Roy, Vanek) and Nashville, an expansion team, may have the best record of drafting and grooming number one goalies, but at the end of the day, the saying is "Coaches are hired to be fired" and the two above mentioned have avoided that fate.

Trotz led the Predators to 4 straight playoff births before narrowly missing last years tournament, while Ruff (who took over the Sabres a year after Trotz started coaching the Predators) has led the Sabres to 3 conference finals and a Stanley Cup final where the controversial "Foot in the crease" goal ended their amazing run.

In a sport where awards are handed out on a yearly basis and people's accomplishments can sometimes be short lived (Ruff won the Jack Adams trophy as "Coach of the Year" in 05-06 season, Trotz holds the record for number of games coached by the first coach of an NHL franchise) it should remembered how great a job Trotz and Ruff have done in a world where job security is at a premium, and that the job of an NHL coach is never that secure.