(WGR 550) -- Lindy Ruff gave The Howard Simon Show an early Christmas gift during his weekly 8 a.m. Tuesday appearance, announcing Ryan Miller as Wednesday night's starter -- in Ottawa -- and admitting Patrick Lalime will play this weekend. Both Friday versus Toronto and Saturday against the Penguins are home games.
Perhaps Ruff was in a good mood after an exciting 4-3 win over the Canadiens on Monday evening in Montreal that made it four wins on the bounce for Buffalo. The Sabres are succeeding in spots that have failed them in seasons past, rallying for late wins and holding off the opposition.
"As painful as mistakes can be, you gotta learn from them," Ruff said. "We've spent a lot of time talking about points we've lost."
"It was a real good win (against) a team in our division (and) it pushes them back. We knew that they'd be really hungry with the fact that the previous game in our building really went out way. I was curious to see how we'd play it."
Ruff acknowledged that it has helped to have Ryan Miller leading the league in nearly every important goaltending statistic.
"Our goaltender has played very well for us," Ruff said. "As a team, we have a lot of guys who've embodied playing better away from the puck."
Ruff was asked whether he'd rather have the balanced scoring the Sabres have had, or his top players scoring more.
"If you look at Gaborik with the Rangers and where they're at, there's a lot of thinking that if you pay real good attention to one line, it makes it pretty easy to shut down a hockey team," Ruff said. "I think our top two lines have played better. They've been in on the scoring in Montreal. They were in on the scoring in New York. It would be great if one of our lines got hot."
The head coach also said he didn't think Patrick Kaleta, who has scored thrice in two contests, would be this far along offensively. Ruff and Kaleta have talked often about becoming more than a pest.
"To be realistic, I didn't think we'd quite be at this point," Ruff said of Kaleta's improvement. "There were situations where I didn't think he was thinking about hockey, taking himself out of plays, and (I told him) if you don't think about playing hockey, you're not going to play that much."
Clearly, Kaleta has learned. For the entire conversation, head to our Audio Vault shortly.
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