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I think enough time has gone by, anyone besides me wanna see

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Mess said:
People won't soon forget when Leafs were setting 100 year old franchise best marks for points 105 and wins 49 by a Leafs team in a season. Of course that came with a HOF GM and a NHL coach that is top 10 in NHL wins career all time.

Babcock of course leading Canada to back to back Olympic gold medals for Canada at both the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, will be what Canadians will most fondly remember him for.

Coach Babcock became the only coach to join the Triple Gold Club; members have won a Stanley Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a World Championship, and he also guided Canada to gold at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, to gold at the IIHF World Junior Championships in 1997, and the University of Lethbridge to the CIS University Cup in 1994.

A proven winner at all levels and a sure fire first ballot Hockey Hall of fame inductee, where he will join his former Leafs GM.

Kyle Dubas believed he knew more about winning than his legendary coach, so he replaced him, and here we are today, where after 2 embarrassing 1st round losses to CBJ and Montreal we await the results of this years playoffs to see what happens next.
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Interesting, if it was Babcock who loss two first round series, as Keefe did. Would Dubas have extended Babcock? I doubt it, but he extended Keefe. Personally with Keefe they will be fighting for the last playoff spot, and if they don't make it with this core, whats Dubas to do next, fire Keefe, I doubt it.
 
LEAFANFORLIFE23 said:
Why? It's not like Keefe has done any better, in fact You could argue it's been worse because Keefe has a much better defense core than Babcock ever had, and better goalie depth then Babcock ever had.
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Babs received much, much better goaltending.
 
Babcock was abysmal.

What is this nonsense, revisionist history?

Babcock was done in by his stubbornness to never mix up certain lines, his biases towards players and his dislike of others, and his inability to change tactics. All three of those aspects make you a garbage coach.

Every stop he has made has had those same critiques. He had success in Detroit but was also blessed with depth and wealth.

I'm not saying the current Leafs coaching staff is good - but Babcock was terrible.
 
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zeke said:
Babs received much, much better goaltending.
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I'm talking about goalie depth Beyond Andersen.

The only Babcock bad a backup compareable to Campbell was Mac other than Mac who was waived there was.

Enroth who failed

Sparks who failed

Neuvirth who failed before he even started.

Hutch who couldn't win a game for Babcock if his life depended on it.

Then Babcock got fired and Keefe was handed Campbell who looks like a #1 if he stays healthy.

We will see about Marazek.

Keefe has had capable goalies almost from day 1.

Babcock had 1 guy nearly his entire time here and the one time he DID have a capable backup Dubas waived waived him and gifted the job to Sparks and we already know how that went.
 
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Mess said:
People won't soon forget when Leafs were setting 100 year old franchise best marks for points 105 and wins 49 by a Leafs team in a season, where their coach was a finalist for the Jack Adams the year prior (his third time being a finalist for the NHL coach of the year award), when he led the Leafs from 30th place the season before to their first playoff berth since 2013 and 1st playoff birth in a full season since 2004.

Of course that came with a HOF GM and a NHL coach that is top 10 in NHL wins career all time, so those results weren't all that surprising. But Leaf nation was going through a world of hurt from 2004 on until Babcock arrived, to restore a regular playoff appearance again.

Babcock of course leading Canada to back to back Olympic gold medals for Canada at both the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, will be what Canadians will most fondly remember him for.

Coach Babcock became the only coach to achieve the Triple Gold Club; members have won a Stanley Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a World Championship, and he also guided Canada to gold at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, to gold at the IIHF World Junior Championships in 1997, and the University of Lethbridge to the CIS University Cup in 1994.

A proven winner at all levels and a sure fire first ballot Hockey Hall of fame inductee, where he will join his former Leafs GM.

Kyle Dubas believed he knew more about winning than his legendary coach, so he replaced him, and here we are today, where after 2 embarrassing 1st round losses to CBJ and Montreal we await the results of this years playoffs to see what happens next.
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Very well said.
 
LEAFANFORLIFE23 said:
I'm talking about goalie depth Beyond Andersen.

The only Babcock bad a backup compareable to Campbell was Mac other than Mac who was waived there was.

Enroth who failed

Sparks who failed

Neuvirth who failed before he even started.

Hutch who couldn't win a game for Babcock if his life depended on it.

Then Babcock got fired and Keefe was handed Campbell who looks like a #1 if he stays healthy.

We will see about Marazek.

Keefe has had capable goalies almost from day 1.

Babcock had 1 guy nearly his entire time here and the one time he DID have a capable backup Dubas waived waived him and gifted the job to Sparks and we already know how that went.
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Taking all goalie performance into account:

Leafs 2016-2019 rankings under Babcock:

Fewest Shots against: 30th in the NHL
Fewest Expected Goals Against: 27th in the NHL
Team save%: 5th best in the NHL

Leafs rankings under Keefe:
Fewest Shots against: 11th in the NHL
Fewest Expected Goals Against: 5th in the NHL
Team save%: 17th best in the NHL

Talking about backups is meaningless considering the absolute elite goaltending the team received under Babcock with Freddy and some others and then fell off a cliff when Freddys game went south near the end of Babcocks tenure (and got him fired IMO).

Keefe has transformed the Leafs from a defensive laughing stock to one of the best defensive teams in the league.

I actually wish we could get 2018 Freddy back to play with this team.
 
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Mess said:
People won't soon forget when Leafs were setting 100 year old franchise best marks for points 105 and wins 49 by a Leafs team in a season, where their coach was a finalist for the Jack Adams the year prior (his third time being a finalist for the NHL coach of the year award), when he led the Leafs from 30th place the season before to their first playoff berth since 2013 and 1st playoff birth in a full season since 2004.

Of course that came with a HOF GM and a NHL coach that is top 10 in NHL wins career all time, so those results weren't all that surprising. But Leaf nation was going through a world of hurt from 2004 on until Babcock arrived, to restore a regular playoff appearance again.

Babcock of course leading Canada to back to back Olympic gold medals for Canada at both the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, will be what Canadians will most fondly remember him for.

Coach Babcock became the only coach to achieve the Triple Gold Club; members have won a Stanley Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a World Championship, and he also guided Canada to gold at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, to gold at the IIHF World Junior Championships in 1997, and the University of Lethbridge to the CIS University Cup in 1994.

A proven winner at all levels and a sure fire first ballot Hockey Hall of fame inductee, where he will join his former Leafs GM.

Kyle Dubas believed he knew more about winning than his legendary coach, so he replaced him, and here we are today, where after 2 embarrassing 1st round losses to CBJ and Montreal we await the results of this years playoffs to see what happens next.
Click to expand...


Babcock was abysmal down the stretch and in the playoffs in his final year here. He had completely lost the room. That doesn’t take away from his prior success here, or elsewhere. That doesn’t change that he instilled many good teachings on players and helped their careers.

It’s only revisionist history that wishes him back, he was absolutely done here, and for good reason. Even the best coaches in the world have shelf lives and his best before date was up. The room was completely lost, his time was up. That should have been clear to everyone.
 
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Since Matthews/Marner:

Babcock: 98pt pace
Keefe: 108pt pace

Offense

Babcock: 3.26gf/gm, 2.96xgf/gm, 32.6sf/gm
Keefe: 3.36gf/gm, 3.03xgf/gm, 32.1sf/gm

Defense

Babcock: 2.95ga/gm, 2.81xga/gm, 33.2sa/gm
Keefe: 2.79ga/gm, 2.47xga/gm, 29.3sa/gm

Goaltending

Babcock: Fred 77gs%, .917 -- McE 10gs%, .925 -- Other 13gs%, .895
Keefe: Fred 55gs%, .903 --- Jack 29gs%, .923 --- Other 14gs%, .901


And apparently, Keefe did this despite having a shitty GM that destroyed the team's depth.
 
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Babcock lost the room and the front office. Regardless of what you think of his approach or his tactics, or Keefe's for the matter, he was well past his expiry date when he got fired.

Also, the traditional versus analytics stuff is such tiresome bunk. Yes, the front office uses analytics, among other things, but if someone can point me to a core piece that's only here because of analytics and would otherwise fail some traditional version of being a good player, it'd be a first.
 
Remember when Babcock sat out one of the Leafs' best playoff performers last year on his return to his former team because of some imaginary message he was trying to send to him?

I want more of that kind of stuff. I think we can all agree that there isn't enough drama surrounding this team.
 
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Both Babcock and Keefe are ???? for me. Keefe's usage of Nylander while riding a duo that was doing nothing besides filling up excel spreadsheets with xGF and CF etc. cost us the series. A series we were up 3-1 to an inferior team. This usually gets coaches fired.

Our better defensive stats are 100% Dubas. Lou was going to drive our D into the ground. Islanders have Chara in their top 4. We'd have suffered similar fate and we were trending towards this until thankfully he left. On top of that Lou wouldn't have had a Pulock and Pelech from the previous regime to at least salvage a top pairing.

The elite offence we already had.
Dubas revamped the D.
Dubas brought in some goalies to help transition from Andersen.

Time for Keefe to make his mark and own something for himself. There's way too many pieces handed to him so far and all he has to show for it are 2 embarrassing playoff losses.
 
Babs is a good coach. He gets a lot out of his players until his shtick runs out. I honestly don't think he is fit to coach the Gen-Z of today and the future TBH. His shit was all about making people fear for their careers by belittling them to the point where they felt like they were playing their last NHL game. Or by mentally f***ing with them to the point where they felt like they couldn't stray from the path ahead. I am actually shocked he was able to get that much out of his guys TBH. But fear was an accepted form of motivation not too long ago. Luckily that is not the case anymore.

If you look at a comparable, there are a ton of players who stand by and openly vouch for John Torterella. Despite him being as hard as he is. They appreciate his honesty, and don't mind him holding themselves and their team mates accountable. Not everyone had a great experience with Torts, John Scott being one of them. But that is to be expected when you are the guy in charge. I think the fact that there are few players, if any, that come to the defense of Babs speaks volumes given how much he has won with his players. We will never know the full truths of what this guy did in behind the scenes, but I am fairly confident it is much worse than the stories we already know.

I think the most telling thing from Babs NHL tenure was him Benching the greatest American born player of all time (Modano) on game 1499 to end his career. To me, that is the most classless, egotistical, and outright psychotic thing I think I've heard about a coach. I think that story alone speaks to the character of Babs. I see no logical explanation why you would do that to a legend of the game other than a maniacal desire to assert yourself as the Alpha.

Guy is tactically a good coach no doubt, but he is a f***ing Dino IMO. I'm a big believer in second chances, I just don't know if this old dog can learn a new trick. His ego is far too big to start from the ground up (ie. AHL or Assistant Coach). And as far as I am concerned, when you make mistakes part of your job in repairing your image is to humble yourself. Until he shows that, I will say he has no space in the NHL
 
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Doublerum1975 said:
What he did to Jason spezza really you want someone like that back?
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I genuinely think he sealed his fate that day. It was a deliberate poke in the eye of management and given how much that room loves Spezza, probably pissed everyone off there, too. Once they went off the rails that fall, you knew he wasn't getting it back on track.
 
Twine Tickler said:
Babs is a good coach. He gets a lot out of his players until his shtick runs out. I honestly don't think he is fit to coach the Gen-Z of today and the future TBH. His shit was all about making people fear for their careers by belittling them to the point where they felt like they were playing their last NHL game. Or by mentally f***ing with them to the point where they felt like they couldn't stray from the path ahead. I am actually shocked he was able to get that much out of his guys TBH. But fear was an accepted form of motivation not too long ago. Luckily that is not the case anymore.

If you look at a comparable, there are a ton of players who stand by and openly vouch for John Torterella. Despite him being as hard as he is. They appreciate his honesty, and don't mind him holding themselves and their team mates accountable. Not everyone had a great experience with Torts, John Scott being one of them. But that is to be expected when you are the guy in charge. I think the fact that there are few players, if any, that come to the defense of Babs. Which I think speaks volumes given how much he has won with his players. We will never know the full truths of what this guy did in behind the scenes, but I am fairly confident it is much worse than the stories we already know.

I think the most telling thing from Babs NHL tenure was him Benching the greatest American born player of all time (Modano) on game 1499 to end his career. To me, that is the most classless, egotistical, and outright psychotic thing I think I've heard about a coach. I think that story alone speaks to the character of Babs. I see no logical explanation why you would do that to a legend of the game other than a maniacal desire to assert yourself as the Alpha.

Guy is tactically a good coach no doubt, but he is a f***ing Dino IMO. I'm a big believer in second chances, I just don't know if this old dog can learn a new trick. His ego is far too big to start from the ground up (ie. AHL or Assistant Coach). And as far as I am concerned, when you make mistakes part of your job in repairing your image is to humble yourself. Until he shows that, I will say he has no space in the NHL
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Good post.

Babs was definitely right about some things about the team, bit that doesn't suddenly erase all the additional BS he brought with him to the team.

The Spezza humiliation alone was absolutely disgraceful
 
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