Aki-Petteri Pulkkinen
The Edmonton Oilers are seriously planning to reheat the same porridge again, writes NHL journalist Aki-Petteri Pulkkinen.
Mike Babcock was the Columbus Blue Jackets man for a good couple of months in 2023. PDO
I had to see it today.
The Edmonton Oilers, a traditional NHL organization run by adults, are really looking for “monster coach” Mike Babcock as their head coach.
That is, a coach who coached in an NHL match seven years ago and who was fired from his previous position before he had time to even step behind the team’s bench.
Didn’t the NHL organizations learn anything from Jarmo Kekäläinen’s mistake?
Kekäläinen, who was the GM of the Columbus Blue Jackets, appointed Babcock as his team’s head coach on the first of July in 2023. The club and the coach parted ways in mid-September before the start of the next season.
The firings were caused by leaked information that Babcock had demanded team captain Boone Jenner to show the pictures on his phone.
I still somehow understood Kekälä’s experiment. Babcock was known as the coach of the old league, whose methods are questionable.
In the Toronto Maple Leafs, he had asked then-young promise Mitch Marner to evaluate the work ethic of individual teammates and later presented Marner’s evaluations to the entire team.
After all, everyone can learn from their mistakes, and Babcock could have changed his ways after the Toronto scandal, right?
However, this was not the case, and Kekäläinen admitted that he had made a mistake.
Babcock is a successful coach, but the fact is that his ways are no longer appropriate for the 2020s.
And yet the Edmonton Oilers are seriously planning to reheat the same porridge again.
In Edmonton, the pain and pressure are absolutely enormous, but Babcock is hardly the solution to this.
Connor McDavid has two years left on his contract with the Oilers. It is generally considered a virtual certainty that he will leave in the middle of his contract if and when the Oilers do not win the championship next season.
With the possible hiring of Babcock, the Oilers would seem to be playing sunk rich or stark poor.
The mere speculation about Babcock’s salary is a clear message to the superstar McDavid: the club will turn over all stones so that McDavid wins the championship in Edmonton and stays with the club.
In the spring of the finals, the Oilers fell because there was not enough quality around the superstars, the defenders were prone to mistakes and the goaltending was a fiasco.
Babcock is not the answer to these questions.