SSC-1987_Rob Ray Oral History Article Graphics_VB

On Friday, prior to hosting the Nashville Predators at KeyBank Center, the Buffalo Sabres will induct Rob Ray as the 44th member of their Hall of Fame.

A fifth-round draft pick in 1988, the Stirling, Ontario native played 889 games with the Sabres from 1989 to 2003 and has since been a color analyst on the team’s MSG broadcasts. His contributions to the franchise, combined with more than three decades of community involvement, have made Ray one of the most beloved figures in Buffalo hockey history.

Ahead of Ray’s induction ceremony, a collection of former teammates, opponents and coaches shared with Sabres.com their memories of the legendary enforcer.

Like most conversations about Rayzor, whose 3,207 career penalty minutes rank sixth in NHL history, this one starts with the gloves off.

Gord Donnelly, Sabres defenseman, 1991-1993: There’s some good stories about Rob.

Jason Woolley, Sabres defenseman, 1997-2002: Trying to get to the bottom of this challenging specimen? Okay.

Donnelly: Before (Buffalo), I was on Winnipeg or maybe Quebec City. You’d see the stats before the game and say, “Who is this friggin’ guy?”

Donald Audette, Sabres forward, 1990-1998: Rochester, he was pretty tough too. I wouldn’t say at the beginning everybody was fearing him, but I think he managed over the years to get a name for himself.

Ken Sutton, Sabres defenseman, 1990-1995: He was on a line with Scott Metcalfe in Rochester. I’m a young kid – I was 19 at the time, I’m coming from Saskatoon. I don’t know if it was an exhibition game or what, but I got firsthand experience of Rob Ray and Scott Metcalfe. They were just running around, hitting everything that moved. That was my introduction to pro hockey.

Woolley: Rayzor didn’t even know there was a puck on the ice, half the time.

Donnelly: One night before a game in Philly he says, “I’m going after Dave Brown tomorrow.” I said, “Whoa! Okay, you sure about that?” He said yeah. And he followed up on it. He had a really good fight with Dave Brown – big lefty, 6-5. I think that fight pushed him over the top. He was just so confident after. And strong, with the big, barreled chest and long limbs. He just took off from there.

Woolley: He’s got massive paws, the size of his head. And he’s got a bucket of a head.

Dave Hannan, Sabres forward, 1992-1996: Everybody in that league, you know who you’re playing against. In the pregame meetings, teams would go, “This guy, he’s tough. He’s going to come at you.”

Woolley: He was just feared. I would’ve played against him a lot, because I matched up against third and fourth lines. Back in the day, I wouldn’t go near Rayzor, and Rayzor really had no need to go near me. We didn’t engage in that way. I just had so much respect for him, and even more when I played with him.

Hannan: He would only have those fights with the other team’s tough guy. He would never try and hurt a star or a third liner.

1920x1080

Audette: I saw so many fights, I can’t recall one.

Hannan: Our line pretty much stayed the same, but if there were injuries, he’d move up with us on the left side. There’d be a lot of times that, as we’re going out over the boards, he said, “Just be ready, because I’m gonna go after Tie Domi” or anybody like that. We’re trying to check, score goals, get things going. It was just like, “Here we go again.”

Ray: When I got here, Rick Dudley was the coach, and Duds was an amazing player. He was hard-nosed, gritty – the best coach I could’ve had, stepping into the NHL to play my role. He taught me when to (fight), when not to, reasons for it, timing.

Lindy Ruff, Sabres coach, 1997-2013, 2024-present: I think he understood that, when the time was right and the time was needed, he didn’t need a coach to tell him what to do.

Hannan: When I finished playing, I moved back to Pittsburgh and got in the working force, and Buffalo was in playing the Penguins. And Jay Caufield was a tough guy that played for Pittsburgh. I called [Rayzor] and said, “Listen, I’ve got a customer coming in tomorrow,” and I got good seats through the Penguins alumni. He said, “The first shift that I’m on, you can make sure I’m going right after Caufield.”

So, we’re in the warmup and he looked where we were sitting – because I had dinner with him the night before – and he started giving me the thumbs up. About 10 minutes into the first period, I’m with my customer and I just said, “I know Rob. I think he’s gonna drop the gloves and fight him.” And the customer goes, “I’ll bet you 50 bucks.” And I said, “Okay. Good.”

So all of a sudden Rayzor comes on the ice – it was offsides at the blue line. He looks back at me and sure enough he drops the gloves with Caufield. It was a good fight. I think Rayzor won.

Then my customer goes, “How the hell did you know that?” And I said, ‘Well, I had dinner with him last night, he told me he was gonna do it.”

We could call that insider trading.

Audette: Rayzor was smart enough to figure out how to battle with all those guys … he’s not 6-4.

Sutton: Every time you go to the Forum in Montreal, it was always a tough game and he was always there to back you up. We had a really tough team – we had Gord Donnelly, Brad May, Rob Ray, Matthew Barnaby. You felt safe with those guys on the ice, especially Rayzor. He wanted to fight everybody.

The Montreal Forum was home to the division-rival Canadiens from 1926 to 1996.

Ray averaged 5.7 penalty minutes across 60 career games versus Montreal.

box

Donnelly: It was just so much fun playing in Buffalo, on the (196-foot) ice surface instead of 200. It was really good for the three of us, including Brad. You can make a lot of body checks, forecheck, chase down the defense. We had a lot of fights.

Today, NHL rinks are a standardized 200 by 85 feet, but that wasn’t always the case. At the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, the Sabres’ home from 1970 to 1996, the ice measured 196 by 85 feet. For Ray and Co., those four feet made all the difference.

Ray: In a little building like that, there was just no hiding for anybody – we could just go at them. You could control the tempo of a game so easily. I’ve had guys, since we’re done playing, come up to us and say, “When we came in to play you guys in The Aud, it was like, ‘Let’s just get out of here. Let’s get this over with and get out of here.’”

Sutton: I asked him one day, “What are you doing? Why do you want to fight all these guys?” He goes, “I want to fight every tough guy in the league.”

He wanted to fight so and so, he did. Then he fought Dave Brown in Philly. We go into LA, he fights Marty McSorley. So, at the end of his career he goes, “There isn’t one guy I didn’t fight that I wanted to.”

Of course, he fought Tie Domi a dozen times or whatever. Why would you want to fight a guy that many times?

Ray and Domi fought 13 times in their careers.

Ray: I look back now, and I go, “Why?”

But you listen to the people and the guys, even the players, how excited they get. It was something they looked forward to, because they knew it was gonna happen. I still look back – it’s an entertainment side of the game that’s disappearing. But I think we understood there was a reason for it. Not only for the game itself, but for the people that were here expecting it.

Brad May, Sabres forward, 1991-1998: I loved it, first of all, because I didn’t have to fight Tie Domi. Never once. I was in Buffalo for seven or eight years. It was Rob’s guy.

While Ray ranks sixth on the all-time penalty minutes leaderboard, Domi ranks third with 3,515, May ranks 37th (2,248) and Donnelly ranks 50th (2,069).

Tie Domi: We’re the only two that played every game of our careers thinking, “We might have to fight that night.” It was just a different time; when you policed the game the way we used to, guys knew they couldn’t take advantage of our teammates. Especially the stars.

Ruff: They both respected how tough each other were. And I think they respected the fact that they knew that at some point, if the game was going sideways, they were responsible for trying to change [that].

Domi: If they were down two, I knew he was coming.

Ray: There was no winners, there was no losers. But I think I was 12-and-1.

Hannan: The coolest thing about him is that back in those days, there were no tie-downs in the back of your sweater. He would actually have elbow pads and shoulder pads cut up and stitched inside his jersey. So, a lot of times when he got into a fight, he started tussling, a guy tried to grab his jersey, his jersey would just come right off and he’d have no undershirt whatsoever.

As soon as that jersey came off, he would come back with a right or a left and just pummel guys.

Sutton: You just couldn’t believe how fast it came off. Just in the blink of an eye, it’s off. Fighting’s hard enough, but if you have nothing to grab onto on your opponent, you’re in trouble.

Domi: I was gonna actually give up fighting him, because it was getting painful. That’s why I’d get a few in early, because as soon as it came off, it was like you’re at his mercy.

ray1

Hannan: Finally, the NHL said you can’t do that anymore, tie that down.

Rule 46.13 in the official NHL rulebook, instituted during Ray’s career and popularly dubbed the “Rob Ray Rule,” states the following:

“A player who engages in a fight and whose jersey is not properly “tied-down” (jersey properly fastened to pants), and who loses his jersey (completely off his torso) in that altercation, shall receive a game misconduct penalty.”

Audette: He became known for that.

Jay McKee, Sabres defenseman, 1996-2006: Rob was a forward thinker. He was ahead of the curve, and he was doing what he felt was best to give him the best advantage in a fight, and I can only commend that.

Audette: You saw fights with Tie Domi and big guys, they just went over and over. It’s not like in today’s fights – they last like two or three seconds and they’re done. They were punching and they were unbelievable.

Hannan: The thing is, he knew his role.

Ruff: Rayzor was there to create a safe working environment, and most nights, that’s exactly what he did.

Audette: When I came in, sometimes you don’t know everything. But you realize at the end, everything he was doing, he was doing for the team, and that’s what mattered most.

Ruff: He was the guy that gave our guys a lot of comfort. He knew that his job was to make sure that these guys could play at a high level and let nobody take advantage. And if you look around the league, I don’t know if there were too many that were better at doing what he did.

Audette: We were stuck in a 5-on-5 battle on the ice against Calgary, and I ended up with Gary Suter. And Gary Suter is a pretty big guy, and we started fighting. And I was not winning that one, I was getting punched pretty hard, and Rayzor just jumped in it.

On Nov. 16, 1991, at Calgary’s Olympic Saddledome, Sabres forward Pat LaFontaine took a Jamie Macoun high stick and suffered a broken jaw, broken teeth and a damaged facial artery. Macoun wasn’t suspended, and when the teams met again Dec. 8 in Buffalo, they combined for 185 penalty minutes.

Ray: We had gotten in a huge line brawl. Grant Ledyard and I were right in the Calgary bench fighting. We were inside the bench going at guys. But Donald was fighting Suter. If you watch the thing, I went from pile to pile to pile trying to help out. Donald was a tough little bugger.

Audette: 5-foot-8, 190 pounds

Suter: 6 feet, 215 pounds

Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time 0:00
 
1x
    • Chapters
    • descriptions off, selected
    • captions off, selected

      Rob Ray jumps in to defend Donald Audette.

      Audette: I remember the next day, I think we’re playing in Toronto, and I couldn’t talk all the way there, I was so hurt in my mouth.

      Hannan: When you get to know him over time, he backed everybody up. His teammates were a big part of his role. Back then, he would make sure he defended anybody – our stars, Pat LaFontaine, stuff like that.

      Audette: When Rayzor was there, he policed the league. Guys like us, yeah we got hit and stuff. But when they were overboard, the team stuck together.

      Ray: There was no better compliment than a teammate coming up and saying, “Hey, thank you. Thanks for bailing me out of that situation,” or, “Thanks for getting them off my back.”

      Woolley: I always respected so much what he did for our team and for our teammates. I’ve always had a soft spot for the guys that stood up for me. I just love the guy.

      Audette: For sure, with him in the lineup, I felt a lot bigger and a lot stronger.

      Ray: If you walk away from the game and 99 percent of the people you played with could say, “He did his job, he was a good teammate,” that’s a win.

      Audette: The thing with Rayzor, he makes you accountable for your game. Even if you’re one of the best players on the team and there’s nights you’re not going, he’s gonna get you going.

      Sutton: You know how he was on the ice – he was rambunctious. Always go, go, go, like a turbo. And he was kind of like that off the ice.

      Donnelly: It was at Montreal, the old Forum. I was already in the box, and he had done something really stupid on the ice. I don’t know, took a bad penalty. I can’t remember what it was. He started yakking and yakking and yakking, and he sits down beside me and he says, “I’m f –-d.” John Muckler was gonna give him s–-t.

      We had a laugh attack in the penalty box in front of 18,000 people.

      John Muckler coached the Sabres from 1991 to 1995 and served as general manager from 1993 to 1997.

      Ray: Gordie and I had so much fun together. When he came here, for me it was like, “Okay, I don’t have to take all the big guys on, now you can do it.” After a while, Gordie was like, “I’m too old for this. Now you take the big guys.”

      The two spent plenty of time together in the box. In 1991-92, Donnelly’s first season with the Sabres, he and Ray ranked sixth and second in the NHL, respectively, in penalty minutes.

      Sutton: I made Buffalo, and we ended up living together for the whole time I was there, like five, five-and-a-half years. We drove to the rink together, pretty much did everything together. That’s when we became really good friends. We were kind of like Felix and Oscar. One was neat and one wasn’t. And guess what? I was the neat one.

      Ray: Sutts always dressed perfect, acted perfect, clean place. Not so much on my side. We had apartments that were next door to each other, but we didn’t even shut our doors.

      Audette: I got married in ’93. Rayzor, we weren’t friends and all that, but he came to my wedding. And I was like, “Wow, Rayzor came to my wedding.” He didn’t have to, but he came, and we ended up like at 3, 4-o-clock in the morning in the pool at the hotel, and my buddy Gino Odjick was there – I don’t think they ever fought after.

      Surely Rayzor didn’t get into any fights at the wedding…

      No…

      Well, no. He scared a lot of people though.

      Woolley: He’s very sarcastic. He’ll go right at you, but when he goes right at you, it means he likes you and he respects you.

      Sutton: We played against each other in Buffalo. I think I was playing for New Jersey. We line up against each other – you know, we’re best friends – and he goes, “Let’s go, let’s fight.” And I’m like, “What? Are you crazy?” And he goes, “No, seriously, let’s fight. I won’t hurt you.” I’m like, “I’m not fighting you. Are you kidding me?”

      Even if he wasn’t trying, he’d still kill me.

      After their four-and-a-half seasons as teammates, Ray and Sutton played eight games head-to-head from 1995 to 2001.

      Ray: I would never fight him. He was the kind of guy you could just say something to get him off his game.

      bench

      Donnelly: On the bench, he was a real agitator. He would say anything to anybody on the other team. Anything. Sometimes you cringed and sometimes you had a laugh attack about it. What’s wrong with this kid? He’d just say anything. ... You’re crossing the line here. But it worked for him. Kept him engaged in the games and concentrated on the games.

      Woolley: My first practice, I made an errant pass to one of my players and Rayzor yelled out, “What the F did we give up to get this guy?” There’s my start with Rob Ray. Literally first practice, first drill, and he was all over me. And I loved it.

      Ray: Wools was always the prima donna, flashy guy. Always tried to make the nifty plays. And we weren’t really that kind of team.

      Woolley: Here was Rayzor’s strategy: The louder he yelled, the more attention it took off of him and on to the next person. So, if he screwed up a drill, he would just yell and blame me or whoever was on our squad. But we weren’t falling for it. I’m like, “Bro, you screwed it up and you know it. I don’t give a s –-t how loud you yell.”

      Ruff: From day one, Rayzor was a fun guy to be around. Even in practice, he would put a smile on your face. He would work extremely hard, but he would have fun inside the drills. He had a lot of fun with his teammates.

      Hannan: One night he got a goal. I can’t recall where it was. But we practiced the next day, right? So he scored. He was on cloud nine. We all were for him, obviously.

      John was watching him in practice, and he started throwing these cross-ice passes and fancy passes and stuff that you wouldn’t really do. I remember Muckler stopped practice, brought him over and just reamed him out a little bit to say, “Listen, you got a goal last night. If you get five, you get your first bonus. Dump that puck in, get in there, forecheck, go to the net. That’s how you’re gonna score.”

      Ray: I played with Hanner a long time, him and Wayne Presley, and they were both such competitors. I’d get in a fight the night before, my hands are bloody, I can hardly hold onto my stick, and Hanner would be yelling at me because I wasn’t handling the puck in practice.

      Donnelly: I vaguely remember that. What’s he doing? Backhand passes? WHAT? He didn’t lack confidence. Very confident guy. And that’s a gift. That’s why he succeeded, I think.

      raycelly

      Sutton: He scored more goals than people give him credit for.

      Ray finished his NHL career with 41 goals and 50 assists in exactly 900 games – a 0.10 point-per-game average.

      Donnelly: We call those guys puck pushers.

      Woolley: But he went to the dirty areas, because not many guys were gonna mess with him. And when he did, pucks would go off his ass or off his stick and in.

      Donnelly: He could really skate. He could really cover the ice, up and down the wing. Really could move.

      Hannan: What people don’t understand is he worked at his game. He wasn’t just someone that was a fighter. He worked on learning how to forecheck. He worked on his puck management, where to put pucks, where to cycle. And he was so big and strong. A little shorter, but he was thick, and he could do a lot of things in the offensive zone to help keep pucks in there.

      Was he a scorer? No. Was I a scorer? No. He knew his role, and that’s why he was very valuable in the playoffs.

      Ruff: When I coached him, he scored a couple key goals. Scored a goal in a Toronto playoff game.

      Woolley: It was a friggin’ miracle that it happened.

      The Sabres made the playoffs in 11 of Ray’s 14 seasons with the team, and he totaled three goals and two assists in 55 career playoff games.

      In Game 4 of the 1999 Eastern Conference Final at Marine Midland Arena, now KeyBank Center, Ray scored what was ultimately the game-winning goal. Buffalo took a 3-1 series lead over the Toronto Maple Leafs and, with a five-game victory, would advance to the franchise’s second Stanley Cup Final.

      Video Player is loading.
      Current Time 0:00
      Duration 0:00
      Loaded: 0%
      Stream Type LIVE
      Remaining Time 0:00
       
      1x
        • Chapters
        • descriptions off, selected
        • captions off, selected

          Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals vs. the Toronto Maple Leafs

          Ray: That goal broke the Leafs’ back. They’ve not been able to recover ever since.

          Ruff: Teammates couldn’t be happier when a guy like that, who does what he does for his teammates, ends up scoring a goal. Bench goes crazy.

          Ray: By that time, there’s more coverage of it, more video of how excited guys were. You look at it, it brings back pretty good memories. It was pretty neat.

          Woolley: I believe he played a bigger role than you ever knew. Than he ever knew.

          Audette: He’s got a golden heart.

          Sutton: He’s got a soft side, man. I’ll never forget, when I got traded from Buffalo, I was devastated. I was crying. I got traded to Edmonton. I’ll never forget it – he was the first guy there for me. And he goes, “You’re gonna go there and you’re gonna do great, blah blah blah.” It was just really good. I appreciate that to this day.

          Audette: I go to Buffalo probably once, twice a year, and every time I’m in the building, he heard about it and he’s coming down. No matter what, he’s gonna find me.

          Hannan: All of the games I played – I played in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa – I’ve never seen a more giving person to the community.

          After the 1998-99 season, Ray was awarded the King Clancy Memorial Trophy, given to the NHL player “who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community.”

          Ray was – and remains – heavily involved with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, among other organizations.

          Ray: You don’t do it to win the award. … It’s one thing being recognized through your team, and when you’re recognized through the league, it’s at a totally different level.

          Sutton: When I was there, we used to go to the children’s hospitals. He would always do that. He’d be the first guy to sign up for stuff like that. The one thing I’ll say about Rayzor, he’s super gracious with his time.

          Hannan: He was a great ambassador. Being a giving person, doing a lot of work in Western New York, being part of the team, transitioning from playing to getting into the media – I don’t think there’s a guy out there that did as much as that.

          Ray concluded his playing career with Senators, appearing in 11 games for Ottawa from 2003-04. He immediately joined MSG as a color analyst and his voice has been synonymous with Sabres hockey ever since.

          Video Player is loading.
          Current Time 0:00
          Duration 0:00
          Loaded: 0%
          Stream Type LIVE
          Remaining Time 0:00
           
          1x
            • Chapters
            • descriptions off, selected
            • captions off, selected

              1999 King Clancy Award Winner

              Sutton: He has really good insight. He’s got a lot of respect from the players. … He is the face of the Buffalo Sabres, so why not have him representing us on TV? A great idea, absolutely.

              Woolley: What Rayzor’s doing for a living now, I’m just so happy to see him. I can tell that he’s happy and he’s enjoying what he’s doing. And he’s really good at what he does.

              On Oct. 28, the team announced Ray’s election to the Buffalo Sabres Hall of Fame.

              Audette: Not surprised. For everything he meant to the city, for what he brought. I mean, the guy still lives and works and bleeds with the Sabres.

              Donnelly: I was really happy for him. I know he deserves it. He’s earned everything, on and off the ice.

              Sutton: I was not surprised one iota. I was actually a little surprised at how long it took. I’m glad they’re doing it. They’re doing the right thing. He has given so much to that team, that organization, that city. Crazy. He needs to be up there with the greats, and he is.

              Audette: He entertained people for so many years on the ice. I mean, it was not an easy job.

              Sutton: He could be the most popular athlete in Buffalo history – he’s up there with Jim Kelly, Josh Allen, he’s up there with everybody. It’s incredible how popular he is, and there’s a reason for it, right? He gives back to his community, and he stayed there. He’s been there since 1990. That’s his home.

              Woolley: For him to get this recognition is well deserved. We all love Rayzor, man.

              Ruff: I just thought that was really an automatic. For all he’s done playing-wise, team-wise, all these years of broadcasting.

              When you think of the Sabres now, you think of Rob Ray.

              Video Player is loading.
              Current Time 0:00
              Duration 0:00
              Loaded: 0%
              Stream Type LIVE
              Remaining Time 0:00
               
              1x
                • Chapters
                • descriptions off, selected
                • captions off, selected

                  Roll the highlight film!