Babcock will make Leafs ‘accountable — Rival GM

Murray, then managing the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, remembers his interview with the then head coach of the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks quite well.

“He’ll make fair demands on them”.

Instead, what coach Mike Babcock wants to watch is the Toronto Maple Leafs with a clear head in this training camp – his training camp – starting on Friday here on the East Coast.

Following those humble beginnings, Kostka enjoyed his share of fame with the Maple Leafs, in a late-blooming, local-boy-makes-good kind of way. “I’m here to give everything that I have for this organization and for this team”. They’ve put in their work, I know that. They’re going to know how to play.

Who knows if any of this is going to work, but with Lamoriello and Mike Babcock at the helm, you have the sense that there’s a plan, a vision, a blueprint in place.

He spoke about process rather than results. It’s not as if the Maple Leafs roster is void of talent.

He also resisted predictions or promises of where the team was going in the short-term. “It’s going to take some time, but it’s going to happen”. “And to me that’s what it’s about”.

“I like Dion as the captain of the Leafs”, Babcock said. “No”, Kessel said in March, following rumours that Phaneuf would be dealt at the trade deadline.

“It’s an opportunity to get all the players together”, Lamoriello said. It was the middle of November and there were probably some thoughts, at that point, that this team was not going to succeed.

The Red Wings, by contrast, sat 11th, ninth and eighth in that same span.

Following their medicals, players filed in one by one to speak with reporters.

“I think it’s more exciting for everyone, including our players”, said goaltender Craig Anderson, who received some oohs and ahs for a fully extended poke check.

But now, Babcock says, none of that matters. Eighteen years later he scores the winning goal at the World Cup. The math didn’t add up so well in a similar attempt with the Leafs. They acquired Pittsburgh’s first-round pick in the 2014 draft, Kasperi Kapanen, in the Phil Kessel trade, and Connor Brown was the leading rookie scorer in the AHL last season. We’re going to look after him with structure and talking to him. “We’re going to learn how to play first”. “And the reason I haven’t done that is because things went so poorly, why would I watch them be bad?”

Jonathan Bernier and James Reimer are 27 years old.

It’s here, rather than in the goal department, where Babcock believes he and his staff can make an initial difference.

“I played with (Senators left winger) Clarke MacArthur in Toronto, but I don’t know how many players have played with both teams”, he said. “In the meantime, if you’re a young guy and you want to play on the Leafs, take someone’s job”.

“I might have to make it up on the weekend, but it’s worth it”, he said.

“It’s an easy target if you’re the captain”, Babcock said.

Murray believes the Ducks would have won multiple Stanley Cups had he and Babcock both remained in Anaheim through the 2004-05 lockout. Chances are he’ll get a good dose of it, first hand.

Babcock’s greatest challenge as coach of the Maple Leafs over the next few seasons will be to somehow stomach the meaningless losses in February while the team builds this thing up piece by piece and all the while not lose his mind.

Now, he says, he often brings in young and relatively unknown assistants – such as Leafs newcomers D.J. Smith and Steve Briere – as they introduce him to new ideas and challenge his mindset, 13 years after he came into the National Hockey League as a relative unknown himself.

He didn’t want to sit through the bloodbath of a year ago. “The coaches that have learned that and adapted to that are the ones that are successful”. For now, players are on board with something a little different. “That’s the one word that describes him, that he is very structured”.

“Being on a line with those two, they’re skilled”, Marner said.

“Simple as that”, said Lamoriello.