BYE BYE BABCOCK
Slumping Leafs fire coach
If you didn’t know what Kyle Dubas looks like, you do now.
He’s the baby-faced GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs; the data-driven millennial with the hipster glasses and the boyish smile. He’s also the guy in the crosshairs.
And he’s all out of bullets. In firing head coach Mike Babcock on Wednesday, Dubas came out of the shadows and put his reputation and job on the line. He can no longer hide.
This is officially his team. It is also his fingerprints on the mess.
He’s the one who lured John Tavares to Toronto and then named him captain. He’s the one who signed Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander to cap-killing contracts. He’s the one who booted Nazem Kadri out the door and brought in Tyson Barrie and Cody Ceci.
And now, he’s the one who fired the highest-paid coach in the NHL, who had another three seasons and Us$18.75-million remaining on his eight-year deal. What a statement. What a risk. New coach Sheldon Keefe, promoted from the minors on Wednesday, will try to clean up this mess. It’s up to Keefe to do what Babcock couldn’t do: Get this underperforming team out of a six-game losing streak and back into the playoff picture.
It’s a lot to ask of a first-time NHL coach taking over a quarter of the way through the season. But if he fails, it will be Dubas — not Keefe — who follows Babcock out the door.
Which is fair. There are no more excuses. Dubas finally has the coach and the roster he wanted.
You couldn’t say that with Babcock behind the bench. Babcock was never Dubas’ idea of a perfect coach. Babcock was too old-school and too stubborn for Dubas.
If the two couldn’t agree on whether Jason Spezza was good enough to play on the fourth line, they certainly were not on the same page regarding Matthews’ ice time.
With Keefe, whom Dubas originally hired to coach for the OHL’S Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and then won a Calder Cup together with the Toronto Marlies, there is a relationship. There is trust. There is also a shared philosophy in how to win hockey games.
We will now see if the problems with the Leafs — who can’t score on the power play and can’t defend on the penalty kill, who can’t take leads or win on backto-back nights — were due to coaching schemes or the players Babcock had to work with.
Ultimately, we will see if this is Dubas’ fault.
Dubas has bet heavily on speed, skill and offensive creativity. Everyone on the team thinks he can score 50 goals. The problem is few want to go in the corners and do the grunt work. No one hits. If they do, it’s followed by an apology.
In some cases, he has overpaid players. Tavares, Matthews, Marner and Nylander eat up 40 per cent of the salary cap. That’s why the Leafs can’t afford a backup goaltender. That’s also why every player on the Leafs’ bottom two forward lines and third-pairing defence tandem is earning less than $1 million.
That’s not a problem for the Atlantic Division-leading Boston Bruins, where the NHL’S leader in goals, David Pastrnak, earns $6.66 million and Brad Marchand, ranked third in points, makes $6.125 million, while perennial Selke Trophy favourite Patrice Bergeron takes home $6.875-million.
Toronto has three players earning $10.893 million or more.
Matthews is on pace for 50 goals and almost 100 points, and Marner was averaging a point per game before getting injured. But the Leafs are still only 13th in goals per game and rank in the bottom 10 in goals allowed.
But the Leafs’ problems aren’t related to a lack of bodychecks or who the backup goalie is. This team doesn’t always compete. The best players haven’t necessarily been their best players. Or they haven’t been as good as their salaries would suggest.
Maybe that is on Babcock. Or maybe, Dubas bet on the wrong players and the wrong style of play.
If it’s the latter, it won’t be long before Dubas’ mess becomes someone else’s to fix.