Burning question in Leafs camp
Toronto head coach Mike Babcock has to change — but can he or will he?
TORONTO, Ont. - The tightrope walk for Mike Babcock as coach of the Maple Leafs has already begun.
He is metaphorically wobbling as training camp is about to begin, trying to remain stable with a new coaching staff around him, trying to remain balanced with so many comfort zone players removed from his roster, trying to focus on his team and its goals with full knowledge there is a front office split of sorts on his present and his future.
There isn’t consensus around the Leafs that Babcock should still be the coach. Publicly, they will smile, the way general manager Kyle Dubas smiled the other day, saying he tripped over his words at the end of last season when not being certain about Babcock’s return, but the fact of the matter is not so definitive.
Management wants to see a different Babcock this coming season. He knows that. He’s had to adjust before. He’s had to grow on the job before. He’s capable of doing that so long as he defeats his long-time penchant for stubbornness along the way. Babcock has been a my-way-or-the-highway kind of coach. Not necessarily open to suggestions. Not necessarily open to adjustments. His way, in truth, has usually worked.
Only now, at this time with this Leafs team, with this group of young stars, he begins a new season in a precarious position he has never been before in the NHL. There are swirling questions around him — maybe the most after 16 years of success — and one seems to be: Will Babcock finish the season as Leafs coach?
That was never a question before in Toronto or Detroit. It was never really a thought. He had eight 100-point seasons in Detroit, a Stanley Cup win, a Stanley Cup loss, a Stanley Cup loss as a rookie in Anaheim. There was a never reason to consider replacing him before. He was the standard.
And now there are two factors in play — the first question being, is this Leafs team getting better under Babcock; the second matter being that Dubas’s coach of choice, Sheldon Keefe, who will be the next coach of the Leafs, is just a few kilometres and a telephone call away.
If all doesn’t line up the way Dubas and Brendan Shanahan and company want it to lineup, Babcock may be in some difficulty. At the end of the season, should the Leafs not advance beyond the first round of the playoffs, then it’s all but a certainty Babcock will be replaced by Keefe.
But first, there is this season to deal with and the sure sign of a coach being in difficulty is the replacement of most of his coaching staff. D.J. Smith has gone to the Ottawa Senators as head coach. He may not have been back with the Leafs under any circumstances this season. Jim Hiller, Babcock’s longtime assistant, wasn’t fired, just told to find a job elsewhere and he did so with Lou Lamoriello’s New York Islanders. Instead, the Leafs brought in Dave Hakstol from Philadelphia and Paul Mcfarland from Florida to work with Babcock.
These were not Babcock selections. That’s a always a sign of a coach who is on the ropes. In baseball, they fire a hitting coach or a third base coach before they fire a manager. In football, the offensive or defensive coordinator often go before the head coach goes.
This is basically the warning shot from Leafs management. Here’s your new staff. This is what needs to change. Now let’s all work together and do that.
Babcock is no fool. He knows he might have been fired at the end of last season. He knows there was conversation about that — and I’m not talking about media conversation. He looked around the league — he has no intention of not coaching unless forced to — and took stock of what might have been available or what could be available in the future. No one plans the way Babcock does, with that kind of daily 24/7 intensity. When he signed with the Leafs, he researched all professional salaries in all the major sports before doing a deal with Shanahan.
A deal that paid him giant money up front that will make his eventual firing be rather inexpensive for the Leafs because they front-loaded his eight-year contract. Four years are gone. There have been some giant improvements, some giant steps taken. Babcock’s best work has come in not just establishing a way to do their business, but in the individual improvement of those players he has believed in and worked with.
He has gotten an absolute ton out of Morgan Rielly, the departed Nazem Kadri, Zach Hyman, and Ron Hainsey when he was here. But the problems of the past three seasons have been too similar. The Leafs have been a so-so defensive team, playing without the puck. Rarely has that gotten better — and that’s not a two-man defence issue, it’s a five-man issue.
In each of the last three first round playoff defeats, the Leafs played relatively even hockey against their opponents, but were badly outplayed on special teams in each series, especially on the penalty kill. Babcock is sensitive about that — but it cost him the Boston series last April.
That has to change this season. Babcock has lost his main defenders on the kill, Hainsey and Nikita Zaitsev, whom he often went almost two full minutes with, and find a new group he can rely on. He’s lost Connor Brown from the PK as well. He won’t have Hyman to start the season. That’s a lot of change for a coach who doesn’t care much for change.
And camp will begin next Friday in Newfoundland and it’s highly unlikely star winger and leading scorer Mitch Marner will be there, pretty certain that Hyman and Travis Dermott won’t be healthy enough to participate: He won’t have his lineup anywhere close to what he wants it to be and, frankly, he doesn’t need or care for that kind of uncertainty around him. With a difficult first month on the schedule, he needs his team to click early.
What the Leafs want from Babcock this season is a more open-minded coach, someone who can get the best out of Auston Matthews and William Nylander, someone who can protect Freddy Andersen better and play him less, someone less rigid about ice time played and who gets that ice time and how and when they get it.
Babcock has been on that short list of the best coaches in hockey for years along with Joel Quenneville and Mike Sullivan and Barry Trotz and Claude Julien and Jon Cooper and Peter Laviolette. All of those coaches, except Cooper, have been fired before.
Babcock will never show weakness. It’s not his way. He controls the message daily and the environment as best he can. He’s rather a master at that. But deep down he knows what’s going on no matter what he shows externally. He knows this could be his last year in Toronto.
There are swirling questions around him — maybe the most after 16 years of success — and one seems to be: Will Babcock finish the season as Leafs coach?