{"id":946376,"date":"2026-10-26T01:50:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T01:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946376\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T01:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T01:50:17","slug":"mike-babcock-has-a-winner-in-front-of-him-wiping-the-slate-clean-for-once-ostracized-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946376\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Babcock has a winner in front of him, wiping the slate clean for once-ostracized coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A controversial hire in the off-season, Mike Babcock has steered the Edmonton Oilers to an 8-2-1 record, with Connor McDavid producing at an astonishing rate.Tony Avelar\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

It took Mike Babcock four months to thaw out after most of a decade in the cold. <\/p>\n

In June, Babcock was the Oilers\u2019 impossible-to-explain choice<\/a> to salvage Connor McDavid\u2019s career in Edmonton. In terms of personality matching, this move didn\u2019t make any sense. On the one hand, you had the softest spoken man in pro sports. On the other, you had Saskatoon Machiavelli. <\/p>\n

What were they going to talk about? How would Babcock run mind games on someone who could snuff out whatever remained of his reputation with an offhand comment? Which of the two would play in net?<\/p>\n

The brilliance here was in the summer hire. Outrage requires news oxygen. With everybody up at the cottage, the initial level of dudgeon was unsustainable. By the time Babcock and the Oilers showed up, everybody was tired of being scandalized. <\/p>\n

Then the Oilers stars started making weird connections between Babcock and masculinity. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe doesn\u2019t shy away from telling you straight to your face. He\u2019s a real man about it,\u201d Leon Draisaitl said. \u201cWe\u2019re all men in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathal Kelly: No longer resolute, Jets got burned by trading Hellebuyck to New Jersey<\/a><\/p>\n

Are you talking to us or yourself or what? I guess the problem was simple \u2013 testosterone. Get it into a gaseous state, get it airborne and pump it in through the vents. <\/p>\n

Disaster Watch was back on. You could see it coming. Then it started. <\/p>\n

The Oilers don\u2019t look good. Many nights, they look overwhelming. It\u2019s mostly the top line, but what a line. Those five main guys are coming at you like a Hokusai print \u2013 The Great Wave Over the Ice District.<\/p>\n

McDavid in particular has accessed his inner Mario Lemieux. He isn\u2019t just scoring at a 252-point pace<\/a>. He\u2019s making everyone else in the league look like they\u2019re playing with canes instead of sticks. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Eleven games into the season, McDavid, right, has 33 points. He assisted on both Edmonton goals Saturday night in a blowout loss to the Leafs.Alex Goodlett\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Seven years after his fall, Babcock does not appear chastened, but his sharpest edges have been sanded back. In the early days with the Leafs \u2013 possibly the height of his influence \u2013 Babcock had a tendency to slip into a storytelling\/lecture style. He wasn\u2019t there to coach. He was there to teach. And not just the players. Everyone. <\/p>\n

Even when Babcock put his lamps on you glancingly, via press conference, you could feel his allure. If hockey can be said to have cults, Babcock ran one. <\/p>\n

Babcock no longer speaks in an oracular manner. There are fewer digressions and less smirking. He\u2019s too tough a type to beg forgiveness, but it\u2019s evident in his new approach. I don\u2019t know if he\u2019s the same guy or not, but he wants you to see that he isn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

And absolutely none of that would matter if the Oilers hadn\u2019t come barrel-rolling out of the start. But they have, so all is forgiven. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s all it takes in sports. You were a loser who acted strangely, so everyone decided at once to hate you. But now you\u2019re winning again and haven\u2019t done anything obviously bizarre, so you\u2019re a genius again. Welcome back, sensei. <\/p>\n

Simon Houpt: Leafs Nation in uproar over Sportsnet surcharges for Monday night games<\/a><\/p>\n

From this point on, best intentions will be read onto everything Babcock does. As long as he doesn\u2019t stop mid-briefing and demand everyone hold up their phones and show him pictures of their girlfriends, people will assume he has a plan. <\/p>\n

On Saturday, the Oilers had their doors blown off by the Leafs<\/a>. How bad a night was it? McDavid had only two points. That\u2019s a 168-point pace \u2013 a 33-per-cent production falloff. Maybe he should go on injured reserve. <\/p>\n

The team looked crap, but it still put Babcock in position to score. Afterward, old Babcock would have gotten that beady eyed look that told you someone was going to be waking up to the most horrible text chain of their lives. New Babcock blamed himself. <\/p>\n

\u201c[Leafs coach] Jim Hiller had his group playing harder than I had my group playing, so that\u2019s on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

You see what he did there, right? \u201cIt\u2019s my fault that it\u2019s their fault.\u201d So it\u2019s not really your fault. Even when he\u2019s playing it soft, Babcock can\u2019t help himself.<\/p>\n

The difference is that things are clicking again. Everybody loves his tell-it-straight style again, even when it\u2019s crooked. Maybe Babcock didn\u2019t change. Maybe in the space between 2019 and now, the world changed around him. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

From this point on, best intentions will be read onto everything Babcock does, Cathal Kelly writes, after the coach has gotten his team and its best player out to a roaring start this season.Codie McLachlan\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

What could never be said about Babcock\u2019s approach \u2013 the humiliations, the passive-aggression, the loyalty tests \u2013 was that it worked. It still works. Maybe not in every professional environment, but it does in hockey. <\/p>\n

Babcock didn\u2019t fail in Toronto because he became bad at coaching. He failed because he had the wrong personnel for his style, and couldn\u2019t adapt. Who asks the most ruthless leader in the game to run a school for gifted children?<\/p>\n

In the end, Babcock wasn\u2019t running the Leafs. He was fighting to change them into something they weren\u2019t ready to be. <\/p>\n

In Edmonton, he has something closer to what he had in Detroit. Not in terms of aggregate talent. The Oilers are much more top heavy. But they are like those great Red Wings teams in that they are veteran, and they are desperate. From McDavid down, they can all see their promise coming to nothing. <\/p>\n

It should have been obvious that this was a good match. These Oilers will do now what those Red Wings did then \u2013 put up with just about anything if it results in a championship, and worry about whether it was good for their psyches later. <\/p>\n

The irony here is that Babcock probably would have been a good choice for the Leafs, had he taken the job now.<\/p>\n

At the time he was hired in Toronto, someone told me that he saw himself on the opening montage of Hockey Night in Canada. He felt he could guarantee that by taking the Leafs to a Cup. <\/p>\n

That montage no longer exists, but the challenge does. Ten years ago, Babcock was the greatest coach in the game. Five years ago, he was finished. A year from now, if things turn out exactly right, he\u2019ll be back where he started. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A controversial hire in the off-season, Mike Babcock has steered the Edmonton Oilers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752,2922,8023],"class_list":["post-946376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton","tag-noastack","tag-topstory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}