Jack Adams Award finalists Dave Hakstol, Lindy Ruff share common background

Jun. 25—GRAND FORKS — Dave Hakstol and Lindy Ruff will be in the spotlight together Monday night in Nashville.

They are two of the three finalists for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL's coach of the year.

Hakstol led the Seattle Kraken to the biggest improvement in NHL history from Year 1 to Year 2 of a franchise. The Kraken reached the Stanley Cup Playoffs and knocked out defending Cup champion Colorado in the first round.

Ruff led the New Jersey Devils to an unexpected 112-point season, one shy of the Carolina Hurricanes in the chase for a division title.

But their story together goes well beyond their NHL coaching success.

It goes back five decades to the small farming community of Warburg, Alberta.

Located a little over an hour southwest of Edmonton, Warburg had a population of 438 when Hakstol and Ruff were growing up in the 1970s, roughly the same size as Emerado, N.D. It's a no-stoplight town.

Families know each other, including the Hakstols and Ruffs.

Ed and Theresa Hakstol had three children — Dave, Brian and Sandra. Leeson and Shirley Ruff had four hockey-playing sons — Randy, Lindy, Marty and Brent.

Dave Hakstol grew up playing on youth hockey teams with Brent Ruff, the youngest of four brothers. Although Brent was two years younger than Hakstol, he was so good he was frequently moved up to play with older players.

Hakstol remembers, at about age 10, going on five-hour road trips with the Ruff family to watch Lindy play Western Hockey League games.

"I can remember Lindy's dad grabbing us on a weekend, jumping in a car and we'd go watch the Lethbridge Broncos play," Hakstol said. "We'd drive down there for a few hours, get to watch Lindy and the Broncos play, then drive right back. It would be a late night, then right to an early morning game that Brent and I played. Brent was an unbelievable young guy, a good buddy."

Brent was the closest in age to Hakstol of the four Ruff brothers. Randy is nine years older, Lindy eight and Marty five.

"It's a small, close community," Hakstol said. "Everyone knew who the Ruff family was. Leeson and Shirley were great parts of the community. The older boys were who everyone, as younger players, looked up to. I was good friends with Brent and we always looked up to the older brothers. Lindy was at the forefront of that as a first-round pick."

Brent might have been the best of all of them.

At the age of 16, Brent made the WHL's Swift Current Broncos. Just after Christmas that year, on Dec. 30, 1986, the Broncos were on their way to a road game when the team bus hit a patch of ice and crashed. Brent and three Swift Current teammates were killed in the accident.

The tragedy devastated Warburg and western Canada.

"It was a huge shock and loss for our community," Hakstol said.

Hakstol was playing for Red Deer in the Alberta Junior Hockey League at the time. Lindy was the captain of the Buffalo Sabres.

Dave and Lindy weren't close friends because of the eight-year age difference, and their hockey careers took them on vastly different paths.

Hakstol captained UND for two seasons before embarking on a five-year pro career, which ended due to a knee injury.

Hakstol then jumped into coaching, rising the ranks from the Sioux City Musketeers of the United States Hockey League to a UND assistant to the UND head coach to the NHL.

"When you're from Warburg, you know the other person," Ruff said. "You know another guy from a small town who is able to have success. To see him move up from North Dakota to Philly to where he is now — and he had a hell of a year this year — I'm extremely happy for him."

Ruff played 12 seasons in the NHL, and upon retirement, he immediately jumped back into the league as a Florida Panthers assistant. Within four years, he was an NHL head coach with Buffalo.

But their paths converged again in the spring of 2019, when they were both selected to be assistant coaches for Team Canada at the IIHF World Championships in Slovakia.

"I didn't know him all that well," Hakstol said. "We got to know each other well at the 2019 World Championships. We had an awesome staff — (Alain) Vigneault, Lindy, Kirk Muller. Lindy was at the center of a lot of fun we had on that trip."

Ruff said: "We spent about a month together. I really got to know him there. Our wives became friends. It was really good to connect... we took a little razzing there. Warburg became a hockey coaches' hotbed, and when you get two guys from Warburg in the same coaching room, we took a little guff every now and then."

Their paths have continued to cross as they've coached against each other in the NHL.

The Kraken and Devils played twice last season.

Hakstol and the Kraken won the first meeting, 4-3 in overtime. Ruff and the Devils won the second meeting, 3-1.

The Devils and Kraken generated the two largest point improvements in the NHL from 2021-22 to 2022-23.

New Jersey had a 49-point jump from the previous season. Seattle leaped 40 points. No other team in the NHL saw more than a 28-point increase.

Hakstol sensed, in training camp, Year 2 could be different for the Kraken, who added No. 2 overall draft pick Matty Beniers to their lineup. Beniers is expected to win the league's rookie of the year honor Monday.

"It all started Day 1 in camp," Hakstol said. "Some of the quiet competitiveness and determination of the group. . . you could see it and you could feel it right away. The biggest thing our group needed was some belief to grab onto and hold onto.

"Every time we won, we built a little more confidence and a little more belief in the fact that we had a chance to be a good team. We weren't given the time of day from the outside world and our guys were OK with that. They were comfortable with that. In the dressing room, we had a great group of guys. They thrived on everyone having to do their part night in and night out. If everyone didn't, we didn't have a great chance to win. That was something that really empowered our group."

Along the way, the Kraken found some unique ways to win. During a seven-game winning streak in November and December, they won a 9-8 overtime game at Los Angeles.

"We ended up getting a power play in overtime," Hakstol said. "We scored the game-winning goal, and I don't even know if the puck had hit the back of the net before I started sprinting down the tunnel, making sure they couldn't take away the two points."

Seattle also set an NHL record by winning all seven games of a seven-game road trip. The Kraken won in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Buffalo, Boston and Chicago consecutively.

"Our team was comfortable no matter the situation," Hakstol said. "We won a lot of close, tight, low-scoring games. But we had enough guys that we felt like we could score and produce offense. One of our great strengths was that we never got rattled when we were down a goal or two. We could score enough to win."

In a unique turn, Hakstol is coaching several players with the Kraken who he coached against in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.

Hakstol even tried to recruit one of them — Kraken alternate captain Jaden Schwartz — to play for UND back in the day. Schwartz picked Colorado College, though.

"We still haven't worked that out yet," Hakstol laughed. "It's a topic of discussion. He's a great player and a better person. He's a guy who takes a lot of pride in his ties at CC there. We have a little fun with it for sure."

Seattle's run ended in Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Dallas Stars.

Voting for the Jack Adams Award was done at the end of the regular season, putting Boston's Jim Montgomery as the odds-on favorite. Boston had the NHL's best regular-season record, but fell in the first round of the playoffs to Florida.

Even so, with Hakstol and Ruff in the spotlight, it will be a special night for Warburg.

"You see it happen in bigger towns and cities," Ruff said. "But when you get a small town, have two individuals grow up there and move on, it's just special. I think it sends a message. It doesn't matter where you come from if you work hard enough and follow a dream."

When: 7 p.m. Monday (TNT).

Where: Bridgestone Arena, Nashville.

Jack Adams Award finalists: Dave Hakstol, Seattle Kraken; Lindy Ruff, New Jersey Devils; Jim Montgomery, Boston Bruins.