Toronto Maple Leafs: Thoughts on Being Critical of Mike Babcock

The Toronto Maple Leafs have been struggling to score goals.

In conjunction with this, one of their best young players, William Nylander, has seen his ice-time drastically reduced. The Toronto Maple Leafs can’t score, and Mike Babcock – who was formerly seen as something approaching infallible – is starting to take some heat for some of his line-up decisions. Decisions like Polak playing a ton, Leo Komarov leading the team in ice-time one game, and William Nylander being on the fourth line and also getting way less ice-time than usual.

I’ve been highly critical of Babcock lately because I do not like or agree with his line-up choices. In fact, I barely understand what he is thinking. But – and this is crazy – what if he actually knows what he’s doing?

I think we get so caught up in the day to day of the hockey world that we end up making very strict, all-or-nothing pronouncements. We take sides and there is barely any nuance. You either love the direction of stats based analysis or you absolute hate it. A player is either a star or a complete dud. The coach is a genius or an idiot. You know what I’m saying.

While there certainly exists a lot of good, measured analysis (and it’s terrible cousin: safe-afraid-to-lose-my-access-or-have-a-strong-opinion-for-fear-of-being-wrong analysis) the general discourse usually involves a lot of dichotomous all-in opinions.

So yeah, I think Babcock is recently making some bad decisions. But what if he’s not? Or what if some are bad (Polak) and some are good (Nylander)? By the time we know for sure, we’ll forget we even cared about these relatively trivial matters.

What if Babcock IS a Genius?

Recently, Nylander has been used strangely by coach Babcock. Nylander has had his ice time reduced, he’s been on the fourth line. He got one game at centre, and then the next game he was back at wing. People have been confused. People have been critical.

From my perspective, Nylander has played as good as ever this season. He has been unlucky in his shooting percentage, and thus suffered a down-turn in his stats despite not having any drop-off in his game. And so, with this belief I’ve been critical of Babcock’s usage of Nylander.

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I know lots of times where I’ve made decisions in life that may have looked weird to people following along, but which made sense to me, the person who had the most information and who the decision ultimately effected. I am not so naive to think that it’s impossible for Babcock to be in a similar situation.

Sure, it looks like he’s jerking around a star player and punishing him with a lack of ice time for a slump that isn’t remotely his fault. But we don’t have all the information. We don’t really know Babcock, or Nylander. We don’t even know Babcock’s ultimate goal, what his methods are or even what his motivations behind his decisions might be. We only know what we can observe and what the team tells us (which is often just politic nonsense).

It may, however, turn out that Mike Babcock’s skill lies in getting the most out of people with god-given talent. It could be that he is shaping the player to the best of his abilities in a way in which he believes will turn out to have long-term benefits for the player.

It’s as likely that Babcock is a pro who knows what he’s doing, rather than an expensive fraud who is screwing up one “our” franchise players. Everyone has an opinion, and it is objectively wrong to just assume the coach is infallible. He deserves to be questioned and criticized. But when we do that, I think we should also consider that he has the more information to make decisions than any of us do, and that he has carved himself out a near-legendary career. We shouldn’t make the logical fallacy of ‘appealing to authority,’ but neither should we make the all-too-common 21st Century mistake of completely ignoring the expertise of a more learned person.

Next: William Nylander Not Being Evaluated Properly

Babcock may do things I disagree with. I may not be a professional coach, but that doesn’t place him beyond reproach. Laymen often have useful ideas, and professionals are often stuck in their ways because everything they’ve always done has led to them being highly respected in their field. Non professional people have the right to question professional people. I just think that when we do that, we should keep in mind that we might not have all the information.

Babcock, like any person in charge of making decisions, is not going to please all of the people all of the time. But he is an expert who knows full well what he’s doing, has a plan and is looking to execute it. It’s not a black/white, either/or situation, but until we see Nylander wearing a different jersey, I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt here.

As for the Polak situation……

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