Gary Nylund
Registered User
- Oct 10, 2013
- 31,496
- 25,127
That's a bit harsh. Management wants to know what the coach wants, and will try to facilitate it if it's the best idea moving forward. He was likely asked what the biggest problem was. Obviously our D at the time (and somewhat still to this day) had enough holes that it was borderline swiss cheese. Hanifin was a highly touted pick, and Babcock probably realized that you can't just dump all of the responsibility on Rielly. So his opinion was to get Hanifin. Hunter saw Marner develop, and thought Mitch was the best option. Which you really didn't need Hunter to figure out, since Mitch's mom put up some great highlight videos on youtube. Seriously. Once I saw those clips, I was 100% sold on Marner if the Leafs were in a position to draft him. Fortunately, they did, since Phoenix fell for the "big bodied forward" meme.
Saying Babcock was interfering with their job is just stupid. An organization that works, is an organization that takes input from all levels. If they disagree, that's fine. Asking openly for opinions while engaging in rational discourse is one of the strongest fundamentals of an organization that prospers beyond all others. I don't see management or Babcock crying publicly about differences in opinions.
When you have the 4th overall pick you take the BPA. It's fine to ask Babs what our positional needs are and if two players are exactly equal you take the position you need, that's fine. We don't know what went on with our brass, if all Babcock said was that we need D that's fine, if he was pushing heavily for us to overrule Hunter and take Hanifin, that's not fine.
As far as being too harsh - technically you're right and I agree but that wasn't meant to be taken literally. If you take what I said in context (look at the post I was responding to) then my point was that this idea that we should maybe trade for Hanifin to "appease" Babcock is absurd and I stand by that. I would hope that Babcock is fine, he doesn't need to appeased and Mess is trying to stir up controversy for no good reason.