Babcock’s decision fuelled by ego
His focus should be solely on the Leafs, not World Cup
The recent history of best-on-best international hockey suggests the job description of Head Coach, Team Canada consists of only a few key duties.
1. Explain daily to reporters why Sidney Crosby can’t find chemistry with his latest linemates.
2. Toss Carey Price in net with Duncan Keith and Drew Doughty playing big minutes on the blue line.
3. Drink a beer or eight while cuddling another gold medal.
We could all fool ourselves into thinking it’ll be the lightest of lifting, this esteemed post at the helm of the Canadian entry in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. Certainly, if that were the case, it would explain why Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock inexplicably accepted Hockey Canada’s invitation to take the position, calling it a blessing and an honour at a Thursday press conference.
But we all know there’s a lot more to dominating the international game than the surface view might suggest, that coaching Team Canada is a big responsibility Babcock won’t take lightly. He spent part of Thursday explaining how being the man in charge of the national roster will involve taking his summer vacation and “throwing it out the window.” There will be a lot to think about, a lot to discuss with Team Canada GM Doug Armstrong, a lot of work.
And so it’s worth asking: Why on earth didn’t Babcock politely decline the invitation on account of that other pressing concern that’s supposed to be weighing on his brain 24-7?
Think about it: Babcock just committed to an eight-year contract to tackle what’s most certainly the most difficult and all-consuming task in his sport — you know, that tiny little $6.25 million-a- year day job that involves attempting to turn around a national laughingstock that hasn’t made the playoffs in an 82game season in nearly 12 years and doesn’t look poised to do it anytime soon.
A dozen games into his tenure in Toronto, Babcock has already acknowledged that the job, for all its riches, is tougher than he ever imagined it could be.
The Maple Leafs have two wins. They have, maybe, a small handful of players worth keeping.
They’re in the early, early stages of taking stock of an organization that has oozed dysfunction for most of half a century and attempting to transform it into a perennial Stanley Cup contender. The task is Herculean — or so we’ve been told by everyone in charge.
In other words, there is nothing about Babcock’s situation as the highest-paid hockey man on the planet that screams, “Dude’s in need of a part-time job!”
Don’t tell this to Babcock. He scoffed at the idea that Leafs ownership and management might question the wisdom of him deciding to moonlight as another team’s head coach.
“Why wouldn’t they (want me to coach Team Canada)?” Babcock said Thursday. “I think that would be straightforward.”
Babcock said he and Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello talked about the issue “quite a bit.” But Lamoriello, who attended Thursday’s press conference in Etobicoke with team president Brendan Shanahan and minority owner Larry Tanenbaum, ultimately gave him the OK.
“What people don’t understand sometimes, is they think you are who you are and they think you’re established and that’s it. And you’re not. You’re a work in progress,” Babcock said. “How do you get better ideas than being around the best people in the world? Being around those players, they teach you something every single time. They’ve got ideas. They share them with you. They’re confident guys. The coaches are the same way. There’ll be tons of debate and laughter.”
Leaf fans will be heartened to know Babcock will be enjoying some yucks while he’s learning so much. But what about the Maple Leafs players he’s being paid to coach? They’ll be slogging through the second training camp of the Babcock era largely without Babcock. Given that the World Cup will overlap with NHL camps, Babcock acknowledged it’ll be his Toronto assistants who’ll have to do most of the Leaf-wise coaching next September. In what should be an important month, with the organiza- tion possibly facing crucial decisions about the NHL readiness of prized prospects like William Nylander and Mitch Marner, Babcock won’t be able to give a comprehensive assessment of the young talent on hand. For a developing team, that’s a huge loss.
There’s another side to this, of course. Babcock has proven himself to be a brilliant tournament coach. At the 2014 Olympics Team Canada allowed three goals against in six games. Three. Goals. In. Six. Games.
As Armstrong was saying on Thursday, Babcock’s ability to get roster-wide buy-in had a lot to do with that defensive dominance. Then again, it wasn’t like he was saddled with a ragtag band of malcontents. The talent pool was deep enough that P.K. Subban could barely get a sniff of a shift.
Still, how could Hockey Canada justify taking the national job away from Babcock when all he’s done is win with it? Along with gold medals in the past two Olympics, Babcock won a world championship in 2004 and a junior world championship in 1997. That makes him arguably the pre-eminent coach of professional players available — unless the argument includes Chicago’s Joel Quenneville, who has won three Stanley Cups with the Blackhawks since Babcock won his only one with Detroit in 2008.
Quenneville has agreed to serve on Babcock’s staff as an assistant coach this fall. He’ll join a staff that also includes Boston’s Claude Julien, Washington’s Barry Trotz and Carolina’s Bill Peters.
But Quenneville, to this eye, was the obvious choice for the head job, even if you understand there was only one way Hockey Canada could have handed Quenneville the reins. CEO Tom Renney and Armstrong needed Babcock to gracefully acknowledge he had plenty on his plate in Toronto and suggest it be somebody else’s turn. Alas, no.
“You have a chance to get better,” Babcock said, explaining what attracted him to another run at glory. “By getting better, you have a chance to help the Leafs. And when you know who the players are, you have a chance at free-agent time to know who the players are, instead of just thinking you know who they are. It’s nice to be involved. When you’re not involved, you’re not involved. If you think TV’s getting it done, it’s not.”
That’s a staggering string of sentences. Just when we were under the impression Babcock’s job title was head coach — suddenly he needs to be on Team Canada’s bench so he can be Toronto’s chief scout, too? And as for Babcock assessing free agents — if the organizational dream comes true, by the time next September rolls around, Steven Stamkos will already be a Maple Leaf.
Maybe Babcock’s status as the national coach will sway elite players to come to Toronto. Maybe it won’t. What’s undeniable is that the 2016 World Cup will be Quenneville’s first experience on a Team Canada bench; the fact that Quenneville hasn’t worked at the past two Olympics doesn’t seem to have hurt his NHL coaching acumen.
Babcock expects people to believe he’ll be gathering otherwise unavailable intelligence on the members of World Cup rosters that he wouldn’t otherwise get watching on TV. But the games, every one of them, are in Toronto. He could easily run the Leafs training camp by day and observe the action in person by night.
That’s what he’d be doing if he made this decision using his brain. Clearly it’s his ego in charge here.
And it says a lot about the way things run in Leafland that nobody in the hierarchy overruled it.