Babcock's Future

[Mr Knies Guy]

The Nic Petan addition wasn't made with the intention of getting another piece. It was literally made to remove Par Lindholm from Babcock's list of options, because he was doing the same thing with Lindholm he's been doing with Marleau and Brown. Babcock would NEVER have given Moore a chance with Lindholm there.

If anything shows they're not on the same page, that's it. The GM is making moves to deprive the coach of options because the coach is too stubborn to recognize options that aren't working. And we're going to see it again this offseason. To be frank, although Hainsey drives me crazy, I think he would be a useful contributor if he was the 6th defenseman. But he needs to go, because he won't be the 6th defenseman with Babcock coaching; he'll be the 2nd.

And because the coach wields more internal power than the GM, which is an inherent problem. This coach seems to have no fear for his actions and thus what he says goes

 

[Gary Nylund]

This is the biggest problem I see, his ego. He knows the media/fans have been clamoring to see vets/gud pro's scaled back and skilled, young, energetic players scaled up - eg. the utter obviousness it would have been to slide Moore/Ennis to 3rd line for Willie, and have a 4th line checking line of Marleau/Goat/Brown. It literally made too much sense. Babcock knows all this, but THEN he would be admitting he's been wrong about Marleau, about Brown. He would much rather gamble with "his guys" because if they chip in eventually (see Marleau Game 7 2018) then he looks like the genius that stuck with his beliefs when no one else saw what he saw and that's why he's a HOF coach, etc, etc etc. If he DOESN'T pan out, hey we weren't even favoured in the series and it won't be because good vets like Connor and Marleau had a big role. The fact that he relented with 5 mins to go in Game 7 and finally pushed Moore/Ennis up with Willie when we were in desperate need of some offense is an admission of this supreme stubbornness. Could one not have argued that we were desperately in need of some spark much earlier in the series when we could have put this series away? Guy really waited until 5 min left down 2 goals to 'experiment' with a change when your 3rd line was doing absolutely nothing all series? It's way too little too late - he will die on his stubborn beliefs before admitting he's wrong and it's holding this team back.

Excellent post!

Contrast Babcock's stubbornness to what Nick Nurse did with the Raptors this season. He asked people to bear with him because they were going to spend several months trying a ton of different things and then, he went ahead and did exactly that. Try everything, see what works and be prepared to adapt on the fly.

I so badly want a Nick Nurse equivalent to coach this team. If I have to suffer through another year of Babcock taking this group of players, possibly the most talented roster the Maple Leafs have EVER had and making it a sum of less than it's parts I'm going to lose my freaking mind.

Mr. Shanahan, are you reading this? You know how precious these opportunities are, do you really want to risk wasting one more year of this window to win which is wide open?

 

[Just Rude]

To me, the word selfish implies that Kadri somehow benefited from his actions - he didn't.

No, he did not benefit. He put himself before his team by going off the deep end, without thinking of the consequences and how it could hurt his team. Again.

That's its what a mean by a selfish play. If Kadri is in the lineup, we win. I have no doubt.

But, since this is a Babcock thread, I will say that the coach made a few peculiar decisions in a series that was very winnable, with out without Naz. He deserves the heat coming his way.

 

[Nalens Oga]

There's no way he makes it past mid-season if they play like they have since February, right?

Also there's hope that the division is better, hopefully if the team is sitting outside a wildcard spot then it forces Shanahan/MLSE to step up and fire him before January so we can salvage next season.

 

[TorMapleJays]

PLOT TWIST : MATTHEWS, MARNER and MARLEAU ALL LIVE UNDER THE SAME ROOF.....

Dynamics.

 

[Gary Nylund]

No, he did not benefit. He put himself before his team by going off the deep end, without thinking of the consequences and how it could hurt his team. Again.

That's its what a mean by a selfish play. If Kadri is in the lineup, we win. I have no doubt.

But, since this is a Babcock thread, I will say that the coach made a few peculiar decisions in a series that was very winnable, with out without Naz. He deserves the heat coming his way.

I get what you're saying but I disagree. But that's fine, we are only arguing semantics and we can agree that what Kadri did was stupid and he lacks self-control to an "impressive" degree.

Agree with the rest. We probably win with Kadri and the series was very winnable even without him. I'm frustrated beyond belief with the way this opportunity to win the cup was flushed away and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Babcock absolutely needs to go. And the only way I'd keep Kadri is if the best return we could get for him is laughably low, he simply can not be trusted.

 

[ShaneFalco]

The Leafs power play didn’t score in Game 6 or 7. It wasn’t all threatening either, certainly nothing like the Bruins PP and nothing at all like the operation with James van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak of the two previous seasons. It felt dangerous in October, unstoppable even, but after that it was sort of underwhelming given all the talent. In fact, from Nov. 1 until the end of the regular season the unit ranked 13th — just ahead of the

Ottawa Senators.

Average, in other words.

The penalty kill ranked 19th over that stretch, and while the Leafs didn’t take a penalty in Tuesday’s series finale, there’s no denying the PK — which gave up seven goals, including a pair in Game 6 — was a major factor in the series — just like last year.
And while it was Jim Hiller overseeing the power play and D.J. Smith overseeing the penalty kill, the results ultimately fall on the head coach and both fell short this season.

Babcock also rarely strayed from his loyalties to certain players, namely Connor Brown and Patrick Marleau. It was only in the third period of Game 7, when the Leafs looked done, that Babcock finally dropped Brown and Marleau from William Nylander’s line and got the plucky combo of Trevor Moore and Tyler Ennis in there in their place.
It was evident all season that Marleau wasn’t the same player as even a year earlier, but the Leafs coach stubbornly stuck with him until the end, hoping for some sort of revival in the playoffs — which never did come.
Marleau didn’t score all series despite drawing almost 15 minutes per game. He looked his 39 years and had only eight shots — the same as Ron Hainsey and Nikita Zaitsev — two of which came in Game 7. Brown didn’t score either after an eight-goal regular season. He managed only six shots all series, with one assist.

It happened again. Why couldn't the Maple Leafs get past the...

 

[93WrapAround]

Excellent post!

Contrast Babcock's stubbornness to what Nick Nurse did with the Raptors this season. He asked people to bear with him because they were going to spend several months trying a ton of different things and then, he went ahead and did exactly that. Try everything, see what works and be prepared to adapt on the fly.

I so badly want a Nick Nurse equivalent to coach this team. If I have to suffer through another year of Babcock taking this group of players, possibly the most talented roster the Maple Leafs have EVER had and making it a sum of less than it's parts I'm going to lose my freaking mind.

Mr. Shanahan, are you reading this? You know how precious these opportunities are, do you really want to risk wasting one more year of this window to win which is wide open?

There are definitely quite a few parallells to the Raptors here - where Dwayne Casey is Mike Babcock. Both supremely stubborn, both deflect blame and are rarely ever accountable/wrong, both seem to operate under prehistoric conventions when it comes to shafting veterans in favor of younger better players (we saw it with Valincunas being stifled, Pascal held back, overplaying CJ Miles and actually putting him on Lebron in playoffs lmao, allowing Demar and Lowry to take awful shots with no ball movement/strictly iso even though it never worked...etc etc etc). Nurse has come in and right away basically said I don't know what's going to work (ie. I don't have the answers right now) and so he experimented all season in hopes of finding the right combinations. We've also seen the ball movement pick up drastically as the season wore on and guys like Kawhi buy in (whereas Casey continued to let iso ball go unchecked with inefficient players).

I definitely agree that we need a guy who's willing to adopt the changes happening in the league and willing to go younger or throw out a previous strategy that isn't working to adapt. Guys like Casey and Babcock will hold teams from their true potential on sheer ego.

 

[Mess]

This Fire Babcock is full

On the new one !!

/closed