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- Oct 1, 2017
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Did anyone ever hear this before? Lolol.
Commadore on Babcock NSFW
This is hilarious! Always knew that he hated Babcock but never really heard the whole story behind the scenes.
Whether Commodore is lying or not, Babcock is more full of himself than most of the players in the NHL. I have throughly enjoyed watching him not be able to get the Leafs over the hump....and win a playoff series. What more does that guy need there?
I try not to put too much stock in first impressions, but Commodore doesn't sound like a liar. He does make some extraordinary claims, however. Incidentally Chelios said in public that veteran players don't want to sign with teams coached by Babcock.Whether Commodore is lying or not, Babcock is more full of himself than most of the players in the NHL. I have throughly enjoyed watching him not be able to get the Leafs over the hump....and win a playoff series. What more does that guy need there?
Babcock might be an ass but Commodore is a real piece of work and an unreliable narrator.
'We started the season 0-5 and he still wouldn't play me'. Uh, actually it's pretty easy to look up that the team started the season 5-0 that year.
And the irony of someone accusing someone else of being 'all about them' and then actually thinking that a Cup-winning NHL head coach was going to push his team to waste $1 million in cap space just so he could end the career of a depth defender he had a spat with a decade earlier ... just wow.
Commodore at that point if his career was a washed-up 33 y/o depth defender who had just been bought out by Columbus, got a reputation contract in Detroit and stunk, and was then picked up by TB, stunk again and out of the league. Babcock didn't play him because he was a bad hockey player.
And the story about how he fell out with Babcock in Anaheim his hilarious. If you read between the lines, he was acquired in a big trade with NJ and expected to make the team, showed up to camp out of shape (like, I'm pretty sure the Anaheim trainers know how to fitness test and weren't making things up), and then told the coach to go **** himself when he was called out for being out of shape. Like, I can't believe Babcock didn't like him much!
Babcock might be an ass but Commodore is a real piece of work and an unreliable narrator.
'We started the season 0-5 and he still wouldn't play me'. Uh, actually it's pretty easy to look up that the team started the season 5-0 that year.
And the irony of someone accusing someone else of being 'all about them' and then actually thinking that a Cup-winning NHL head coach was going to push his team to waste $1 million in cap space just so he could end the career of a depth defender he had a spat with a decade earlier ... just wow.
Commodore at that point if his career was a washed-up 33 y/o depth defender who had just been bought out by Columbus, got a reputation contract in Detroit and stunk, and was then picked up by TB, stunk again and out of the league. Babcock didn't play him because he was a bad hockey player.
And the story about how he fell out with Babcock in Anaheim his hilarious. If you read between the lines, he was acquired in a big trade with NJ and expected to make the team, showed up to camp out of shape (like, I'm pretty sure the Anaheim trainers know how to fitness test and weren't making things up), and then told the coach to go **** himself when he was called out for being out of shape. Like, I can't believe Babcock didn't like him much!
commodore was 31 to start the season with detroit in 2011.
the game log record indicates he got his first start nov 3 which followed a 5 game losing streak by the wings right after the 5 game win streak you mentioned, so while i would agree his memory is garbled as to when it started there was indeed a 5 game losing streak at the beginning of the season and he didn't play during it.
his point with detroit is that he made a call to babcock to make sure the guy actually wanted him, was told he did, then got the bench treatment anyway. i'd say 3 games by christmas represents the bench treatment for a new ufa signing and a giant fu. it's also similar to the season the leafs signed corrado to a one year deal then babcock kept corrado up all year but only played him in 1 game before christmas.
and i am not sure why you are taking babcock's side on the anaheim story. it sounds like exactly the kind of thing that might happen to a slowfooted depth dman in camp who gets carelessly tagged by the coach as needing to get into shape. why would you necessarily prefer babcock over commodore on that story? pedigree?
anyway, here's a compromise theory. commodore is a self declared mouthy hothead and i think to some degree so is corrado judging by those articles where he burned his bridges. they no doubt both wanted to play and both managed their feelings poorly. instead of managing those personalities as a coach should, or simply moving them on if he didn't like or want them, babcock chose to mess with their very shaky careers and sit them on the bench "pour encourager les autres". that seems like a pattern of dick moves to me.
Yeah, the bolded was a sort of grey area for me where I heard that part and just took him at his word that he was absolutely convinced he was in shape. Because it's either the trainers were incompetent or he's just a boldfaced liar. I guess I was inclined to be suspicious of the former.
Everything else though was definitely iffy. Like I can buy that Babcock can come off as a **** but I don't believe anyone would be so vindictive as to purposely waste $1M just to end someone's career, plus refusing to play someone if he didn't think he gave the team a chance to win. NHL coaches are generally all about the results at the end of the day, after all.
It's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Babcock might be an ass, but he's also a winner. He isn't going to push to sign a player he doesn't like and thinks is a bad player at the expense of a better player and his team's cap space just so he can settle a minor grudge from a decade before.
You can pretty much tell what happened here. Detroit management liked Commodore and wanted to sign him, Babcock said sure and did his part in the recruiting, and then they saw the guy in camp and realized why Columbus had bought him out. And then he got hurt, and young guys in Kindl and Eriksson outplayed him, so they stayed in the lineup. Stuff like this happens all the time.
And given what we know about Commodore's personality, I'm sure he was a real peach through the whole process and endeared himself to everyone, and totally didn't throw gas on the fire.
Disregarding the Commodore situation, I did think it was pretty brutal to not play Modano.