LONGTIME COACHING BUDDIES MATCH WITS
Relationship between Flames’ Peters and Leafs’ Babcock goes back 30 years
This relationship dates back to long before Mike Babcock was riding in style as the highest-paid head coach in hockey.
“I’ve known him since he was at Red Deer College,” said close friend Bill Peters, now skipper for the Calgary Flames. “Back when he was driving that old blue beat-up Ford truck.”
The two coaches’ careers have often criss-crossed — Peters skating as Babcock’s captain with the conference champion Red Deer College Kings in 1988-89 and then later working by his side with the Western Hockey League’s Spokane Chiefs, the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings and on Team Canada’s staff at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.
If you think these are just bench buddies, though, you’re missing the point.
As Peters summed up: “It’s way deeper than that. It’s not just a professional and a coaching relationship. He’s a guy that if I need advice with anything, I can use as a sounding board.”
These longtime pals will be trying to outwit each other Monday, with the Flames (5-5-1) in the centre of the hockey universe for a tangle with the Toronto Maple Leafs (8-3-0) at what is now named Scotiabank Arena.
Peters can be prodded into talking about Babcock’s skills and tactics as a bench general but if you become close friends with a co-worker, you probably don’t introduce them by boasting about how they can organize a spreadsheet or run a PowerPoint presentation.
Calgary’s head-coaching hire — Peters arrived at the Saddledome in April after four seasons with the Carolina Hurricanes — can tell you when Babcock started to date his now-wife, Maureen. They were among the guests when Peters married his sweetheart, Denise, in 1990.
He can pronounce the name of the tiny town where Babcock was born — Manitouwadge, Ont., in case you were wondering — and rattle off where his kids were born, too.
He recalls that he and Denise, a nurse, altered their travel plans as they headed from Texas back to Alberta for Christmas one year, spending a couple of extra days in Spokane because Maureen was “sicker than a dog ” and Mike was on the road with the Chiefs.
“A great man, and a great family,” said Peters, himself a proud father of two. “I like being around good people.”
And yes, good coaches.
It’s easy to connect the dots between Babcock and Peters, whose first NHL opportunity was as an assistant to You-Know-Who with the Detroit Red Wings from 2011-14.
Their ties will certainly be a popular storyline on the Flames’ annual trip to Toronto, where Babcock has been earning a historic $6.25-million per winter as the Maple Leafs’ shot-caller.
“I’ve been able to work with lots of good coaches, though,” Peters said before Sunday’s eastbound flight. “I worked with Q (Joel Quenneville) when I was in the minors — when he was in Chicago and I was in Rockford — and to me, Scotty Bowman and Q are the best guys, in-game, at knowing who is going and then bumping guys up, dropping guys down, identifying guys who have extra jump. I think Q does that the best probably out of anybody in the league right now, and Scotty was a master at that also.
“What Babs is the best at is he sees it as it’s happening. He doesn’t need to see it in between periods on video. Somebody might say, ‘Hey, what happened on that chance against at 14:20?’ And he knows. You’ll go to coaches at times — and I’m not saying this has happened here — and say, ‘That two-on-one, what happened there?’ And they’ll say, ‘You know what, I missed it,’ or ‘I was talking to his D -man,’ or ‘I was dealing with something.’ With Babs, he sees it. He knows. He doesn’t miss anything.
“And the other thing that is a huge strength of his, in my opinion, is his ability to take your stuff, add a little dimension to it and make it a little bit better, and then all of a sudden it’s his. He will tell you, R & D, everyone thinks it’s research and development. But it’s rob and do.”
These guys have known one another since their mid-20s, lots of time to steal ideas.
Which is why Monday will be a bit like coaching in a mirror for both buddies, who talk hockey in the winter months and share a passion for spending time on the lake — water-skiing, fishing, you name it — during the off-season.
“It will be a lot easier now that I’m in the West and he’s in the East, so we can help each other out a little bit about pre-scouts on upcoming opponents,” Peters said. “(Babcock) is a guy always looking for information. It’s always, ‘What are you seeing? What’s new out there?’ We know the same things, to a certain degree. And when we play each other, it can be very familiar, at times. I know what he’s doing. He knows what I’m trying to do. It comes down to, as it always does, the players and the execution and everything else.
“There won’t, I don’t think, be much either way that the other guy hasn’t seen.”
Not when you go this far back. “It’s a relationship that has existed basically since 1988,” Peters nodded. “That’s a long time.”
I know what he’s doing. He knows what I’m trying to do. It comes down to, as it always does, the players and the execution