Mike Babcock says he wouldn’t have accepted the offer to become the next head coach of the Edmonton Oilers unless the players were OK with him coming aboard.
The veteran of 16 seasons behind National Hockey League benches, who led the Detroit Red Wings to a Stanley Cup victory and Team Canada to two Olympic gold medals, said he met the team’s core leadership group – including Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman – and heard they are “all committed, all in on winning” even if he’s “making a guy do things” in training camp.
“We (went) through enough things and talked about enough things that they felt comfortable with the process, or I wouldn’t be here,” Babcock told media on Tuesday, after the Oilers introduced him as the new head coach and D.J. Smith as his associate. “I was very clear to them, unless you’re 100-per-cent all in on Mike Babcock, I have no interest in being the coach.”
The NHL cleared the 63-year-old Saskatoon native late last week after an investigation it launched at the request of the league’s players’ association. Earlier this month, TSN reported that the Oilers consulted with the NHLPA about any player objections before potentially hiring Babcock.
The league’s investigation centred on Babcock’s brief tenure as head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2023, when he allegedly infringed on players’ privacy. The NHLPA investigated the allegations before Babcock quit before training camp started that year.
Babcock said Tuesday that a disengagement formed early on in his brief Blue Jackets tenure that led him to quit.
“It was very evident before the year started,” he said. ”I hadn’t benched anybody, I hadn’t talked to anybody, I hadn’t sat anybody out. And it was evident that we weren’t together as a staff right from the get-go. My wife gave me a call and said, ‘It’s time to get out of there.’ I’d been retired. I was pretty good at it. I got back to being retired.”
Self-reflective after quitting Blue Jackets
When asked if he felt he crossed the line, Babcock said he doesn’t think so but that he went through self-reflection afterward.
“Any time you make anybody feel uncomfortable in your life, you should take a look at yourself, and you should say, ‘How could I do that better?’” he said.
Babcock, who last helmed the bench of an NHL team in November 2019 during his fifth season with the Toronto Maple Leafs, has also coached the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (2002-04) and the Red Wings (2005-15). He has a career regular-season head coaching record of 700-418-164 with 19 ties.
He comes to the Oilers a little more than a month after the team fired Kris Knoblauch following a first-round playoff exit to the Ducks in six games. Knoblauch, who is due to begin a three-year contract extension this coming season, had led the Oilers to Stanley Cup Finals appearances the previous two springs.
Clock ticking with McDavid contract up in 2 years?
With McDavid – considered the world’s best hockey player and this past season’s recipient of the Ted Lindsay Trophy as the league’s top player as voted by his peers – due to become an unrestricted free agent in two years time, the pressure is on the Oilers to win now.
Oilers general manager Stan Bowman said any pressure that may be coming from McDavid’s contract expiry date is no different from when he was hired two years ago.
“I don’t know how much more on the clock we are now than we were two years ago, so I don’t think anything changes,” Bowman told reporters.
“Mike commented about how bad those guys want to win. That’s the common through-line to this whole thing. We’re doing everything we can to give our team the best chance to win, and then when you win, guys typically want to continue to win, so that’s our objective, and that’s not going to change.”
Team shifted focus after Cassidy denial
Babcock’s hiring also comes in the wake of their reported pursuit of Bruce Cassidy, whom the Vegas Golden Knights fired in late March with eight games left in the regular season. They replaced him with John Tortorella, who led the Oilers’ Pacific Division rivals to the Cup Final this month, falling to the Carolina Hurricanes in six games. Vegas moved on from Tortorella last week, promoting their minor-league coach, Ryan Craig, to the Golden Knights position.
Vegas had prevented both the Oilers and the Los Angeles Kings from talking to Cassidy last month about their coaching vacancies.
The Kings went on to hire Peter Laviolette, replacing Smith, a former Ottawa Senators bench boss who had been interim head coach in L.A. after they fired Jim Hiller earlier in the year. Hiller is now the new head coach of the Maple Leafs, replacing Craig Berube, the Calahoo, Alta., native who was fired at season’s end.
When asked how he was going to convince Oilers players to perhaps commit more attention to defensive play, Babcock says he’s going to ask the players – and without naming him directly, suggesting McDavid – to play a certain way, evoking the example of Steve Yzerman, the current Red Wings GM who won three Cups as a player after shifting more of his attention to his play away from the puck after years of tremendous offensive output.
“Stevie’s a good friend of mine. He’ll tell you in a second he’d rather win the Cups,” Babcock said.
“We’re not asking (McDavid) to score less; we’re asking him to do things right to make everyone else on the team important and play ... not different than their game, but in a different way in some details of the game.
“I’ve walked through this in detail with them. They say they’re in.”