Babcock, McLellan clear air over McDavid quip

Leafs coach didn’t intend to criticize Oilers counterpart for overusing 19-year-old star

The last time the Toronto Maple Leafs met the Edmonton Oilers, Connor McDavid played 22:46, and nobody seemed happier after Toronto’s 3-2 win than Leafs coach Mike Babcock.

“McDavid played 8:15 in the first period so that helped us too because that’s a lot of minutes,” Babcock said after that game at Air Canada Centre on Nov. 1. “I don’t care who you are going out . . . you jam a guy out there every shift and three in a row, stuff like that, hard to have the same pop.”

It was widely seen as criticism of friend and Oilers coach Todd McLellan, as McDavid is fifth in the league among forwards in minutes played per game.

On Tuesday, the coaches made up, publicly.

“It’s all on me, all my fault. OK?” Babcock said. “Not my intent, but it doesn’t matter what your intent was. (Leafs president Brendan) Shanahan (talked to me about it the next day), and I hadn’t looked at it, and when I looked at it two days later, it was not right.

"Todd McLellan will be a friend of Mike Babcock’s and his family for a long time after hockey. So, don’t get in the way of yourself and keep your mouth shut. How’s that?”

“Well if you know Mike as well as I do, you know he’s an emotional guy, and that was an emotional game for both teams,” said McLellan, who was an assistant under Babcock in Detroit from 2005 to 2008, winning a Stanley Cup in their final season behind the bench together. “And I got a nice call from him afterwards. It wasn’t the way he wanted it to come out.”

McLellan smiled wryly, and added, “And I’ll say this: I used to work for a really good coach (Babcock) who used to tell me, it’s really hard to coach in the league, just coach your own team. So . . . ” Holland at home: Leafs forward Peter Holland didn’t make the trip after his agent met with GM Lou Lamoriello; a trade or waivers seems the next likely option, and the Leafs have no extra forwards at the moment. Babcock also said forward William Nylander, who skated at centre between Matt Martin and Ben Smith, was medically ruled out of Saturday night’s game with an upper-body injury, contrary to a radio report.