Even after Babcock hiring, Leafs’ future fuzzy

Process: But with blessing of president, respected coach will seem to have time to build club into contender

The question was still in the preamble phase when Brendan Shanahan was shaking his head at it.

No, the president of the Toronto Maple Leafs said, there was no sudden move, no big change in the last 48 hours that brought Mike Babcock into the fold. “He just came around,” Shanahan said.

The contract is an eight-year deal worth $50 million US ($6.25 million per season average).

When it was Babcock’s turn to speak, the world’s highestpaid hockey coach, ever, tried to explain the thinking behind his decision. He had been in varying degrees of talks with Toronto, Detroit and Buffalo, and was intrigued by all.

The other offers were attractive, Babcock said: “But they weren’t the Maple Leafs, and they weren’t in this city.”

So for all the talk of the money and the challenge ahead, the deciding factor was: “I wanted to be coach of the Maple Leafs.”

And so he is. He comes to Toronto as the 30th coach of the Maple Leafs, the last 21 of whom failed in their attempts to win a Stanley Cup. To his credit, Babcock avoided making bold proclamations. Mercy, did he and Shanahan ever talk about the process; no one has ever made something so boring sound so utterly desirable.

What any of that means is not at all evident. If you wanted to make the case that Team Leafs — Shanahan, Babcock, assistant GM Kyle Dubas and player personnel boss Mark Hunter, plus whomever else is brought in — intends to carpet-bomb the present roster, there was Babcock’s comment that the team needed to get Hunter more draft picks so he could find more young talent. Babcock also talked about the long time it would take to build properly, and that no quick fix is on the horizon.

But Babcock also talked up some of the veterans of the Leafs roster who came under such criticism last season. Of players like Dion Phaneuf and Phil Kessel, Babcock said his job was “to make people around you better.”

He said he believed in developing leadership, and that he wanted to get to know those guys, and he mentioned the need for a “safe” environment for players.

So the process will be long, and it will seek out draft picks, but maybe not trade veterans if Babcock finds he likes what he sees in them. The process is rather fluid. And that’s the key conclusion that can be drawn from the year-long Shanahan era in Toronto: he really doesn’t have a plan, at least not one that is carefully mapped out.

It is an unusual way to build a hockey organization, where the president doesn’t seem to know what his next move will be until he finds out what move he just made.

And then Babcock woke up on Wednesday morning and decided he wanted to coach the Leafs. The rest of it, they will figure out from here.