Tortorella, Babcock can lead coaching clinic
Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella and his guest, Mike Babcock of the Toronto Maple Leafs, were stationed behind opposing benches in Nationwide Arena on Wednesday night. Between them stood Jody Shelley, of course, and the Jack Adams Award.
It’s good to see Tortorella where he is, and Babcock where he is, and to see where their teams are. They are flesh and blood
and brains in an age of increasing automation.
A year ago, their teams were the two worst in the Eastern Conference. A year later, the Blue Jackets are in the hunt for the Presidents’ Trophy and the Leafs are making a concerted push for a playoff spot. It is within the realm of possibility the teams will meet in the first round. This is one reason Tortorella and Babcock are frontrunners to be coach of the year.
The Jackets and Leafs were the two youngest teams in the league at the start of the season. They remain among the seven youngest teams, even after the trade deadline put a beard on them. If they both make the playoffs, they will be the two youngest teams shooting for the Stanley Cup. This is another reason Tortorella and Babcock are front- runners for coach of the year.
Each has won a Stanley Cup, Tortorella with Tampa Bay in 2004 and Babcock with Detroit in 2008. Both are cut from the same cloth. They have reputations for brutal honesty, painstaking preparation and fiery competitiveness. Babcock might have a stronger filter, but his eyes are crazier.
Foremost, they are smart. In a salarycap era which puts a premium on cheap, young labor, they have found employ with teams in possession of a large number of talented young players. Granted, Tortorella probably had nowhere else to go other than Columbus, and Babcock had 50 million good reasons to choose Toronto, but work with me here.
Tortorella and Babcock deserve a lot of credit for their humanity. This is not to suggest that they’ve been inhumane in the past, although there have been times when you could watch a Totorella highlight and say, “Oh, the humanity.” The beauty of them here, as they peek ahead to age 60, is they remain sentient. They’ve learned a few things, and they’re applying their newfound wisdom.
Babcock is on his third team. He will turn 54 next month. He has grown kids, out of the house. At last summer’s draft, he scooped up Auston Mathews and said, “I just think it’s so important that you tell the family that you’re going to look after their kid. To me, that’s a big deal. If I have my boy there, I want someone of good moral fiber drafting him and looking after him.”
Tortorella is on his third team (not counting Vancouver). He is 58 years old and has grown kids, out of the house — one of them an Army Ranger in parts unknown. The other day, Tortorella was talking about Zach Werenski and he said, “My job is certainly not to teach him how to play the game, because he is well beyond his years that way. My job is, what type of person is he going to be?”
There has never been anything phony about Tortorella or Babcock, and there is nothing phony about them now. They were excellent coaches 10 years ago and they’re excellent coaches now. They haven’t changed. They’ve grown.
Here’s Tortorella on learning to trust: “Quite honestly, that’s something I know I had to work at ( last summer). That doesn’t come easy for coaches. We’re all a bit of control freaks. We want to touch everything. Sometimes, we touch so many things we screw it up.”
Once again, Wordsworth leaps to mind: “The child is father of the man.”