It's pretty clear babcock is rigid (stubborn) when it comes to line combos, and stapling guys to eachother. He's done it all season. He may switch things up for a game and then he inevitably goes back - despite the fact certain lines just don't work well and aren't producing.
He's already stated before the ASG he'll go back to Kadri-Komarov. Not a fan of him being so set in his ways
Yeah, he said that, but what are our projected lines looking like for tomorrow? What he says and what he does are not always the same thing, especially when talking about the future. He was also very protective of Dermott when he first got called up, but has been very quick to trust him and give him bigger opportunities.
A lot of the lines that he's stuck with performed very well together last year, and keeping players together for extended periods allows them to build chemistry, and gives you larger sample sizes to draw information from. If we were switching up our lines all the time, people would be complaining that he was over-coaching an not allowing his players the time needed to gel.
We were told that he prefers size and grinders over skill, but Matthews is our top Forward in TOI/G, and Babcock's most trusted player upfront. Babcock has no problem with skill, it just needs to come with responsibility, especially when you're a young player learning the ropes. Earn trust and you've earned ice-time - I wouldn't want it any other way. (While Zach Hyman is #2 in EV TOI/G among Leafs Forwards, Nylander, Marleau, Kadri and Marner are 3rd-6th, respectively - Hardly grinders)
We were told that he would never give opportunities to the youth until they were "overripe", like in Detroit, but he then iced 7 rookies last year and took them to the Playoffs.
We were told that Polak and Martin would never sit a game as long as Babcock was the coach, but Dermott and Kapanen are still in the lineup as of today.
Babcock's stubbornness is over-stated, in my opinion, especially when taking into consideration that he is a Stanley Cup-winning coach who has done all of this before - he has reasons for being stubborn when he is, there's logic to it (maintaining balanced lines, Special Teams, etc.), but he's not even as stubborn as people like to paint him. We impatient fans who have no idea what it actually takes to build a Championship team should take a really, really big step back before assuming our "stubborn" coach doesn't know what he's doing. That's not to say that people should always defer to authority, everyone makes mistakes, but all we've done is get better and better under Babcock, and rise higher and higher in the Standings under his tutelage, and I have no reason to believe he suddenly hates scoring, or he's lost his touch, when he's given me no real reason to believe that.
People complained about how he used Rielly when he first got his hands on him, were upset that he wasn't putting him in a position that would "maximize his output" or whatever, but that worked out beautifully, and we've seen a more well-rounded Morgan Rielly because of it. Development and teaching takes time - The less you're switching things around on the guys trying to learn those things, the better.
Create a spot for them; let them grow; release them into the world; Repeat with the next wave of young impressionables.
