Will new coach break Leafs’ curse?
$50-million man Babcock will have to work miracles to help this dysfunctional bunch
During the course of a casual conversation a few years back, Marc Crawford was asked if the impact of an NHL coach could be measured in wins and losses.
Turned out Crawford had given this subject some thought. Without a lot of hesitation, the veteran hockey man said: “It’s seven to eight points a season.”
So there you go, Leafs fans. Your team just paid $50 million US for a new coach and, if everything goes right, they’ll improve from 68 to 76 points next season. Surely that must be worth three hours of discussion on the panel.
The Leafs, of course, have become the newest test case for one of hockey’s enduring questions: Does a coach really make that much of a difference? In signing Mike Babcock to a groundbreaking eight-year, $50-million deal, they made coaches all over the NHL happy.
But is Babcock the man who can end half a century of misery in The Big Smoke? Can he, through his mere presence, alter the course of this cursed franchise?
You have to admit, it’s a helluva question. We just wish we could give you a helluva answer.
The courtship of Babcock ended this week with a civic holiday in Toronto and, while there are parallels in the game’s annals, there was nothing quite like the bidding war for the ex-Detroit Red Wings head coach. When the NHL’s regular season ended, he became the most coveted unrestricted free agent on the market and, because his salary doesn’t count against the cap, suitors were limited only by their imagination in pursuit of the Saskatoon product.
It took the Leafs, who have more money than Bill Gates, to blow things wide open. In signing Babcock to his giant contract, they eradicated the existing standard for top head coaches and created a dizzying new world order.
But what are the Leafs getting for their money? Is Babcock the man to end their suffering? History, unfortunately, is unclear on this subject.
There have been cases where the right coach was hired at the right time — see Joel Quenneville, the highest-paid coach pre-Babcock, arriving in Chicago as their young talent was starting to mature. The same can be said for Tampa’s Jon Cooper and, a couple of years from now, we’ll probably be saying the same thing about Todd McLellan in Edmonton.
But Babcock is a different case. He steps into a Leafs team which has to look up to see the bottom, a team that was broken at the end of the season. There are leadership issues. There are personnel issues. The payroll is bloated by hideous contracts for Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf.
First, the Leafs got Randy Carlyle fired, then won nine of their 42 games under Peter Horachek, which got him whacked. At least that won’t be a problem with the new guy, but where do the Leafs go from here?
Babcock is generally in the conversation of the NHL’s best coaches but, since the 2008-09 season, his greatest success has been in making an average Red Wings team above average. The Wings won the Cup in ’08 and lost to Pittsburgh in the ’09 final. Since then they haven’t been out of the second round of the playoffs, and while Babcock kept them competitive, the plain fact is the Wings stopped being a power when Nick Lidstrom retired.
The Leafs, moreover, have a fraction of the talent and character Babcock had in Detroit. There’s no Pavel Datsyuk or Henrik Zetterberg to take the pressure off the supporting cast. There’s no wave of young talent. The Leafs have a good young defenceman in Morgan Rielly, an exciting prospect in William Nylander and a lot of draft picks this year.
That also makes them four or five years from being relevant, and that’s going to create an interesting situation in hockey’s most self-important market.
At the outset, Babcock’s greatest contribution will be getting the Leafs off the crazy train. The organization has existed in some form of dysfunction for most of the last 50 years, but at least there is now direction and purpose at the top.
Did they have to spend $50 million to provide that direction and purpose? Well, a prudent franchise wouldn’t. But these are the Leafs. They were desperate and, in their desperation, they turned to the one asset they have: money. Now they have Babcock, who at least offers the semblance of a solid foundation.
But can he reach Kessel? Can he make Phaneuf a leader? Can he find a goalie? Can he win without a true No. 1 or No. 2 centre?
Those are the immediate challenges facing Babcock, and they’re formidable. As for the rebuild, the Leafs have started down that road. But there are a half-dozen teams ahead of them.
So again, back to our original question, can one coach make that much of a difference? Can Babcock do for the Leafs what Bill Belichick did in New England or, well, the list gets pretty short after that.
The new coach is an improvement. But for $50 million, you’d expect an improvement. Is he a miracle worker? For the Leafs, he has to be.