‘A perfect match’
Matthews might be the student Babcock has been waiting for
BUFFALO— The first time Mike Babcock met Auston Matthews, he coached him.
Babcock wasn’t Matthews’ coach at the time, understand. He only officially assumed that role on Friday night, when the Maple Leafs made the 18-year-old from Arizona the first overall pick in the NHL draft.
But on the day in the fall of 2014 when Matthews was invited into the coach’s office at Joe Louis Arena, Babcock, then running the bench of the Detroit Red Wings, couldn’t help himself. Advice was in the offing, and Matthews wouldn’t have to ask for it.
Babcock had seen Matthews play a few weeks earlier, starring for the United States under-18 developmental team in a game at the University of Michigan. And if Babcock had ventured to Michigan primarily to get a look at Dylan Larkin of the Wolverines, Detroit’s first-round pick in the 2014 draft, he couldn’t help but get an eyeful of Matthews. The future Leaf and Larkin “stole the show that night,” in the words of Don Granato, the U.S. developmental team’s coach at the time.
So Granato, whose brother, Tony, was an assistant on Babcock’s staff, arranged the meeting. Matthews walked into Babcock’s office and no introduction was required. “Mike said, ‘Yep, yep. I know who (Matthews) is,’ ” Granato remembered in a recent interview. “He said to Auston, ‘I’ve seen you play. You’ve got a good thing going, kid . . . And then he said, ‘Just remember: If your talent exceeds your work ethic, you’re not going to make it.’ No small talk. Just business. And then he walked away.”
The moment, as brief as it was, will go down as the beginning of what promises to be one of Leafland’s most vital relationships for years to come. Babcock, signed as coach for seven more seasons, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Ditto Matthews, Toronto’s first No. 1 pick since Wendel Clark.
So it’s a good thing for Leaf fans that early indications suggest the Babcock-Matthews connection will be a coming together of kindred spirits.
Babcock is the detail-obsessed teacher who will only truly embrace players who display a bent toward constant self-improvement. Matthews, if you speak to the many coaches and instructors who’ve helped him achieve his teenaged hockey dream, is a detail-obsessed player who combines superior talent with a passion for cultivating it. If insiders will tell you that Babcock would have badly clashed with Phil Kessel, the talent-rich but oft-commitment-challenged scoring whiz the Maple Leafs traded away last summer to help set up the possibility of drafting Matthews, the $50-million coach seems a natural fit with Toronto’s new U.S.-bred phenom.
“The kid wants to learn. And (Babcock) is one of the best to teach — I think it’s a perfect match,” said Ron Filion, the former Quebec junior player who coached Matthews in Phoenix for a few years.
If it’s a perfect match, perhaps it’s because Matthews — who has received advanced billing likening him to early-career versions of Jonathan Toews and Anze Kopitar and Ron Francis, depending on which hockey lifer is doing the assessment — is possessed of a skill set that reminds at least one coach of a player Babcock knows well.
“You could market and sell advertising to watch a keep-away challenge between him and (former Wing Pavel) Datsyuk,” said Don Granato. “His hand-eye coordination is really enjoyable to watch.”
Babcock’s focus on puck possession requires skilled men who can retrieve and keep the thing. And Matthews looks like a savant at both, with a no-showboating nature that should please the conservatives.
On Friday night, Babcock called Matthews an “elite player” with an “elite drive train.”
“Expectations for me — it’s real simple,” Babcock said. “You come in and you work hard every day and you get better.”
Said Matthews of Babcock, moments after he pulled on a Toronto sweater: “His resume speaks for itself. Olympic champion. Stanley Cup champion . . . I think I can learn a lot from a guy like him.”
Toronto, of course, is different than any place Matthews has played before. Navigating life as one of its stars won’t be without peril. While Babcock acknowledged there’ll be pressure, he also said of Matthews: “When you’ve been good for as long as he’s been good, you get used to the spotlight. And you get used to delivering under pressure. But it’s our job to insulate him, too.”
Childhood friend Michael Mahan said in recent months Matthews had grown accustomed to dealing with shoppingmall requests for selfies and the like. “He loves the fame,” Mahan said. “He deals with it really well.”
Said Marc Crawford, who coached Matthews in the Swiss pro league this past season: “He’s not going to get overwhelmed by the notoriety and the pitfalls in Toronto. Because he’s smart.”
Still, it was only 20 months ago that Don Granato remembered walking with Matthews through the bowels of Joe Louis Arena and running into Philadelphia centreman Claude Giroux.
“Auston taps me on the side and goes, ‘Coach, can I get a picture (with Giroux)?’ And I said, ‘No. You can’t,’ ” Granato said. “He looked at me like a 12-year-old kid, like I just took his candy away. I said, ‘If he asks you to take a picture with you — OK.’ And Auston looked at me like, ‘Yeah, right.’ And I said, ‘No, you’ve got to change your expectations.”
The selfie requests will soon be coming in quantities Giroux can’t fathom. And as Babcock made clear, the hardest work of a young man’s life is about to begin.