Ruff was an assistant coach for the first four seasons of the Florida Panthers franchise under head coaches Roger Nielsen and Doug MacLean. The Panthers won the Eastern Conference Finals over the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1996 and fell to the Colorado Avalanche in the Stanley Cup Finals.
He became the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres for the 1997-98 season and coached them for 15 seasons. The Sabres reached the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals and lost to the Dallas Stars.
Ruff was the head coach of the Dallas Stars for four seasons from 2013-14 to 2016-17. He has been with the New York Rangers as an assistant coach over the last three years.
Fitzgerald started his NHL career as a center with the New York Islanders and helped them reached the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals and faced the eventual Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens. He played five seasons on Long Island with the Islanders.
He was picked in the 1993 NHL Expansion Draft by the Florida Panthers. Fitzgerald was with Florida for almost five seasons and contributed to the club reaching the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals. It included scoring the game-deciding goal for the Panthers against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals. He was traded to the Avalanche on March 24, 1998 for Mark Parrish
Fitzgerald was selected again in an NHL Expansion Draft by the Nashville Predators in 1998. He would later have stints with the Chicago Blackhawks, Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins.
He joined the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey operations department in July 2007 and was elevated to assistant general manager on July 3, 2009. The Penguins won the Stanley Cup title in the 2008-09 season.
Fitzgerald moved on to the New Jersey Devils as the assistant general manager on July 24, 2015. He became the interim general manager of the team on January 12, 2020.
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