The Toronto Maple Leafs are the richest team in the NHL. They are also the most dysfunctional.
Beyond that, they are about to become the most desperate. The Maple Leafs organization is in free fall as the team lost nine out of ten games before the break. Fans who pay the highest prices in the NHL to watch their team loaf and quit are tossing their Leafs jerseys on the ice at an increasing rate to indicate that they are through with the phony promises and lack of good management.
Compare Toronto’s plight with the Detroit Red Wings, one of the best managed and coached teams in all of sports. Detroit head coach Mike Babcock will be a free agent after this season unless he signs the contract that the Wings placed in front of him months ago. Make no mistake about it, the Leafs are going to back up the truck for Babcock, who will face a crucial career decision.
Babcock is the Only Choice for TO
Leafs Nation is in full revolt, and only Babcock will satisfy the masses. The situation is similar to that of the Michigan Wolverines in college football, where only Jim Harbaugh was considered acceptable as the new head coach and savior. Babcock has won a Stanley Cup at Detroit and two Olympic gold medals as head coach of Team Canada. Just as impressive, the Wings have continued to win as they retool their roster.
Babcock may have had his best coaching performance last year when he took an injury battered Detroit team to the playoffs, after they were written off as dead and finished. Babcock has the proven ability to win through roster change and franchise evolution. If Toronto gives him total power over hockey personnel and makes him the highest paid coach in NHL history, the pull of being the savior of the NHL’s marquee franchise may be too great for Babcock to resist.
Babcock is happy and thriving in Detroit, but respects hockey history. The opportunity to lead the Leafs to their first Stanley Cup since 1967, combined with a bank-busting deal, may be too great of a pull to resist.
Discombobulated Structure
Toronto has switched to a defensive oriented structure under interim head coach Peter Horachek as their lack of effort on the back end proved to be the end of previous head coach Randy Carlyle. The trade-off is that Toronto has sacrificed offense, which was the one strength of the team.
The much maligned right winger, Phil Kessel, who was the whipping boy at the time of Carlyle’s firing, had just one goal in nine games which illustrates Horachek’s dilemma of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
