while he’s being squired across the continent like a visiting monarch, everyone dropping to their knees as he enters the rink, we’ve all decided mike babcock is the best coach in hockey. Not “one of†or “arguably.†just the best, full-stop.
Why is that?
His nhl record is impressive, though no more impressive than several others. He’s taken about 63 per cent of available regular-season points through his career – a little south of anaheim’s bruce boudreau and the off-season’s 1a option, todd mclellan. Babcock hasn’t gotten the detroit red wings through the second round of the playoffs in the past six seasons.
He’s won a single stanley cup – a mark matched or bettered by six other current coaches. He works for ken holland, the nhl’s best spotter of undervalued and/or unrecognized talent. Wherever he ends up, it’s going to be a lot harder to look just as good.
It’s a great résumé, but it doesn’t scream “scotty bowman 2.0.â€
instead, babcock’s imaginative appeal relies on two things – his olympic record and his essential babcockness.
We take it as an article of faith that whoever coaches canada is the best there is, in much the same way we assume the pope is the keenest catholic. If an american or russian asked to put this idea to the test, they’d be waved off as if they’d asked to carbon date the martyrs’ bones. Canada is hockey. The guy in charge of canada is the hockey-est.
Babcock’s universally acknowledged professional superlative boils down to four weeks and two gold medals, in vancouver and sochi. There’s nothing wrong with that. Considering there are no opportunities outside a winter games to stitch a team together, the job of canada’s olympic hockey coach may be the most arbitrarily pressurized in all of international sport. All you can really do is throw the guys out on the ice and pray.
