Babcock brings model for success
Red Wings organization provides ideal blueprint for adopting a new approach in Toronto
Mike Babcock did nothing but win in Detroit. He won without high draft picks. He won without large free-agent signings. He won without all-star goaltending.
He won — or better put, the Red Wings won — partly because of elite talent like Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, and more so because the organization under general manager Ken Holland understood and fostered player development in a way few franchises ever have.
The model is there for the Maple Leafs. It is Holland’s model with Jimmy Devellano’s signature on it and a clear mandate from management and coaching: Every spot on a team is earned. Every player is developed with a sense of patience and logic. There is a clear and unwavering plan that never changes.
The kind of plan Brendan Shanahan keeps referencing without much explanation.
The model to follow is partly Detroit, partly Tampa Bay for Shanahan’s Maple Leafs. It is not coincidence that Steve Yzerman is running the Lightning. It is not coincidence that Jim Nill traded for Tyler Seguin in Dallas. It is not coincidence that Todd McLellan is the new coach of the Oilers and Jeff Blashill is likely the new coach in Detroit and Paul MacLean is a former coach of the year before he was let go in Ottawa: All learned the Red Wing way.
And Shanahan spent the best nine years of his Hall of Fame career breathing in and living the Red Wing life: It is not ironic that Babcock was first on his list of available coaches, followed by McLellan and Blashill. All with Detroit roots. All understanding what it takes to build a contender year after year, without compromising. This is Shanahan’s pathway.
Babcock didn’t make Nicklas Lidstrom or Pavel Datsyuk special players in Detroit: They were special before he got there. He inherited them, worked with them, would be the first to tell you they carried him rather than the opposite. But the players to be impressed with were part of the Red Wings teams of recent years, when it looked like the team would fall back and didn’t.
There were 18 homegrown players on the Red Wings squad that shut out high scoring Tampa twice in the first round of the playoffs. None of the 18 were early draft picks.
But they were players who grew up in the Red Wing system with Babcock coaching them. They developed. They earned ice. Gus Nyquist. Tomas Tatar. Darren Helm. Jonathan Ericsson. Justin Abdelkader. Danny DeKeyser. Riley Sheahan. Petr Mrazek. Luke Glendening. Brendan Smith.
The meat in the sandwich of a 100-point team. None of the names may be sexy on their own. And all of them spent some time — some a lot of time — in the AHL learning.
The way Connor Brown and others are learning now in Toronto. And down the road, he will be one of those Maple Leafs who makes a difference. Just not rushed. Patience has to be the new buzzword in Leafland. Usually, it is the general manager urging patience and the coach demanding help today: It’s different with Babcock, starting now.
He will be setting the agenda around his team. He will be the dressing room voice. Who can play? Who’s ready? Who does what? And he used the word several times Thursday: He wants men on his team.
Last year’s Maple Leafs were dotted with children, on and off the ice. Immaturity ran rampant. That is about to change. Babcock will establish the environment from Day 1. It’s time to grow up or get out.
That’s what the best coaches do. They separate the roster. Babcock is a teacher by trade and has never stopped being that teacher. If he needs to discipline, he will. If he needs to give out gold stars, he will. The talent he will inherit, limited as it may be, has some high end possibilities.
You start with Morgan Rielly. You sprinkle in a little James van Riemdsyk. You hope that a new coach and a new goalie coach can prevent Jonathan Bernier from looking at himself in the mirror. And you go from there.
Babcock will have to do what Al Arbour did with the New York Islanders, what Bob Johnson did years ago with the Calgary Flames, what Darryl Sutter does in Los Angeles: He will take the middle roster to lower roster player and make him better. Be the artist and sculpt him. He will demand more. He will structure more. That will make the team better, one crossover step at a time.
He will be difficult to play for. Not everyone likes his ways but as Steve Shutt once said of Scotty Bowman: “We liked him one day a year. The day we picked up our championship rings.”
Babcock has eight years to get the Leafs somewhere. And personally, if I was going to spend $50 million of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment’s money on an eight-year deal, I might have spent it first on someone like Ken Holland, rather than on a coach. But Shanahan’s view from the beginning has been his own.
He wanted a coach first as he begins the rebuilding process. He wanted the coach as key part of the foundation. He needed and believed in that kind of structure from the beginning. And he wanted the kind of indefinable presence that Babcock brings.
Babcock was the best coach available and he got him. Or to be more accurate, Babcock chose Toronto and the Leafs over other, maybe better hockey opportunities.
This was part challenge, part ego, part city, part the Canadian in him, part financial. This is a life changing time for him. His kids are out of the house. But the reasons for the move — it’s hard to turn away from $50 million and eight years and downtown Toronto — now are mostly irrelevant, especially when it comes to hockey. He is here, the most accomplished Leaf coach since Pat Burns, with a long leash and the rare opportunity to build something in concert with Shanahan that has never been done in the post six-team NHL.
Babcock isn’t just a coach. If you’ve been around him, watched him you know he’s different. He doesn’t just play music: He conducts the orchestra. And if there’s a note out of tune, he can turn all JK Simmons if need be. And then go back to being himself. Always forthright. Always.
He listened to Shanahan’s “brutal honesty,” then gave a whole lot of it back. That’s what he does. He’s not perfect — he lost playoff series to, among others, Randy Carlyle and Dan Bylsma and Barry Trotz and Claude Julien. That’s part of being around pro sport at the highest level.
Just how great he is, we’re about to find out. Babcock talks about the battle and the pain, the fun and the journey. He seems to have a handle on what awaits him. He won twice in win-or-else situations at the Olympics and in Sochi last winter, he coached the most thorough, complete, gameplanned, effective efficient team in tournament hockey history. It was difficult and awe inspiring.
That was Team Canada. The best players in the world. This is Team Canada, NHL style: formerly Collapse Nation. “I believe this is Canada’s team,” Babcock said. “And we need to put Canada’s team back on the map.”