Former Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock is in the news again.
By all accounts, the entire Toronto Maple Leafs organization was excited when the team fired Mike Babcock in November, 2019 and hired Sheldon Keefe as his replacement.
It feels like a long time ago, but do you remember that lovely November day? The Leafs were off to a terrible start after three straight playoff appearances and decided to fire Babcock to help turn the season around. It immediately worked as Keefe introduced music at practice and the team’s energy levels immediately spiked, as they started playing better.
Babcock had the winning pedigree with his Stanley Cup ring and Olympic gold medal, but player’s were never a big fan of him and although the team started to win, coaching a young team probably wasn’t the best idea for him.
In fact, if the Leafs were ever to have hired Babcock, he probably would’ve fit in best now, with a more veteran squad.
However, let’s quickly chat about the rumor of what Babcock most recently said and bring it back to his day’s in Toronto. On a recent episode of the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast, Paul Bissonnette mentioned that Babcock has been asking “see photos on his players’ phones before displaying them on his office television via AirPlay.” (via: Yahoo Sports)
Toronto Maple Leafs Ex Coach Is Not Fit To Coach in 2023
This behavior isn’t new for Leafs fans, as although it’s not the exact same scenario, Babcock told Mitch Marner to create a list of all the players on the team’s roster, ranking them based on effort level, and then he supposedly showed that list to Nazem Kadri and Tyler Bozak, according to The Athletic’s Ian Tulloch.
The Leafs example is a clear reason why it doesn’t surprise me if the rumors are true about Babcock because although he’s a smart hockey mind, he clearly doesn’t have any common sense or social awareness.
Although you can look at the incident of asking someone to show you their phone as being harmless, it’s not only an invasion of privacy, but it’s super awkward.
Coaching in 2023 is a lot different than it was when he was winning a Stanley Cup in 2008 and I think the Columbus Blue Jackets made a huge mistake thinking that Babcock’s former accolades are worth future success.
The Leafs saw it first-hand and a young Columbus team is going to tune him out before American Thanksgiving at this rate.
Thank goodness that Babcock is far removed from Toronto’s organization because even if Columbus is successful this year, players are not going to enjoy themselves.