Unless I missed something, it seems he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Here’s a successful coach attempting (perhaps a bit clumsily) to bridge the gap between old school and new school.
From what has been released so far it sounded to me like a team building exercise where you get to know the people you are going to spend a lot of time with?? All the talking heads are going on about some players being uncomfortable??? Is that where we are headed.....
Sadly.... probably, the irony is that the very reason Babcock is attempting to be more contemporary is because players have become uncomfortable with old school methods.
I have not seen anyone saying he requested all photos except Biznasty and that's based on a former players texts from what I saw.
Yeah this is what I was referencing. If he’s like, “hey let’s get to know each other a little better and exchange some pictures of family and share some commonalities etc,” that’s all good I suppose. But the way it has been portrayed it seems to be more like, “I want to know what kind of person you are…open up your phone and let me see what you’ve got on your camera roll.” Like a character test. In general I’m in support of the core of what Babcock tries to reach in his players, but it’s his methods that are a bit over the top and uncomfortable. ESPECIALLY because he has been canned for this type of behavior in the past…the fact that this is coming up before the season has even started is that much more alarming.
Welp......
Let's see if they replace him with Joel Quinneville.
UPDATE: Phew.... we dodged one.
He also put local boy Spezza in the press box on opening night for his first game as a Leaf. Spezza had many Family abd friends in attendance. Babcock just does not know how to manage and interact with people.
Because of past troubles, I thought for sure there had to be some spin on this Babcock story. I just can't believe what he did, my god what an ass, especially just after he said he wanted to improve his relationship with players after what ex players said about him.
Because he’s such a good person, he’ll be a more effective coach, than good coaches that are not as good of people.
Can’t like this enough. As two old farts I’m certain we both have had many “old school” coaches that we love and I know I would have loved to have seen Mike be more contemporary and succeed…. But this appears to be over the top messed up.
This comes down the person himself. He has no morals. I thought much of the talk about him were just pissed off players, but this, like you said, is over the top.
