Mike Babcock, Toronto Maple Leafs MVP and coach of the year
With a three-goal and three-point cushion in the rookie scoring race, Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs likely has the Calder Trophy wrapped up – hell, he’s within 0.05 of slaying the Patrik Laine points-per-game argument. The hype train has now pulled into the “Hart Trophy vote” station; he’s not going to win, but he’s going to get votes, for certain.
But at this point I’m less concerned with Matthews getting his due and more concerned with Mike Babcock finally getting his. Because when they give out the Jack Adams Award this season, and if the Maple Leafs are a playoff team – and there’s a 97.6-percent chance of this, despite the loss to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday night – it needs to be in Babcock’s hands.
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We all know the Jack Adams is won or lost on the strength of a coach’s narrative, because the broadcasters vote on the award and they care more about three-minute vignettes with broad strokes of story than they do the minutia of the stats.
Babcock, for perhaps the first time, has a story to tell: The Leafs were not expected to make the playoffs, they’re likely going to make the playoffs, they don’t have a goalie carrying the team and he’s had to herd cats with the number of young players that have thrived from start-to-finish on this journey.
So you have the coach overcoming the odds and a surprise team. But he also has an air-tight case for the Jack Adams and, in turn, as the catalyst for the Leafs’ success. This is true both in intangibles and in real numbers.
You can find the intangibles in nearly every story written about Babcock this season, and his handling of the young roster.
Matt Hunwick, a 31-year-old veteran defenseman from Warren, is, like many veterans over the years, impressed with the attention to detail and preparation Babcock and his assistants brings to the task. “With the amount of preparation they put in and the amount of film they watch, there’s really no stone unturned,” said Hunwick, who also played at Michigan. “And, with his philosophy, he’s got a game plan every night and we’re expected to execute it to the fullest, and I think that’s part of the reason we’ve been so successful this year.”
“The passion he brings for games . . . it’s amazing,” said centre Brian Boyle, who joined the team Leafs last Wednesday after a deadline deal with Tampa Bay. “The knowledge he has of other people throughout the league, you have to love the game to know what he knows.”
Babcock may not be everyone’s cup of tea–Chris Chelios recently told a Detroit radio station that veteran free agents didn’t want to play for him here – but his level of preparation and willingness to tell it like it is undoubtedly make his teams better. And the Leafs are currently better than anybody imagined.
“Babs is a very intense guy and he demands that everyone kind of plays his way,” winger Matt Martin said. “It doesn’t matter who you are. You’re going to play the way he wants you to play or you’re going to get some sort of punishment for it. …[Chelios] was here for a long time and I’ve only been with him for three-quarters of a year now, but he is hard and he demands that guys play the right way and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
So he’s got that master motivator, attention to detail thing down. He always has, mind you, but it just becomes all the more obvious when the team isn’t in the midst of a playoff streak like the Detroit Red Wings were. It feels like he’s building something, rather than being a caretaker for it, and that perception makes a different when it comes to award time.
But it’s not just testimony that validates Babcock’s season.
Through 79 games, the Maple Leafs have a team shooting percentage of 8.32. That’s seventh best in the NHL this season, behind the Washington Capitals (9.36) and the Minnesota Wild (9.24).
If this holds, Babcock’s Leafs will have one of the highest shooting percentages in his tenure in the NHL. Corsica tracks team shooting percentage at 5-on-5 back to the 2007-08 season. From then until now, Babcock’s had one team shoot this well: The 2011-12 Red Wings, who had Jiri Hudler at 19.7-percent and Valtteri Filppula at 16-percent. (Wow!)
The Leafs’ shooting percentage last season was 6.36, so this is a bit of an improvement. Ditto their scoring chances (52.14 percent, up from 49.10 percent from last year). Ditto their expected goals-for per 60 minutes, a great scoring metric from Emmanuel Perry; as defined in laymen’s terms by NHL Numbers: “They calculate the likelihood that each shot taken will lead to a goal and use that to calculate the expected goals for a team. So, if a team generates 20 shots that each have a 5 percent chance of being a goal, they would accumulate one expected goal.”
The Leafs’ expected goals last season at 5-on-5 was 2.38 per 60 minutes, and that’s jumped to 2.82 this season.
So what’s changed? Well, let’s start with the obvious: Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Mitch Marner arrived and are the first, third and fourth-leading scorers on the team. Nazem Kadri improved by 14 goals, thanks in no small part to Babcock casting him well.
The offensive spark extends to special teams, where the Leafs are clicking at 24.4 percent compared to 15.4 percent last season, even if they’re going to end up with about 20 fewer power-play chances. (Hey, kids don’t always get the calls.) They crash the crease and do it well, which has always been a Babcock hallmark.
Which brings us to the essential question: How much of this is Babcock?
I like Dimitri Filipovic’s take on Babcock: He gave the Leafs the structure and the template, and then the talent started really arriving to make it work in Year 2. You can’t give him credit for how damn good the Leafs’ Trinity of rookie scorers has been, but you can give him credit for the structure on and off the ice that’s helped them flourish. When’s the last time a team had three rookies at its core and none of them really hit the wall? It’s extraordinary.
But the fact remains, it’s a young team, and Babcock’s led them to what we all assume is going to be a playoff spot. It’s still a team trying to figure a few things out. They give up too many shots per game (32.8). Their team GAA is 2.84, 21st in the NHL, and another reason why Babcock’s Jack Adams candidacy differs than that of John Tortorella, Bruce Boudreau and Barry Trotz, who are all likely to have coached Vezina finalists.
They’re also 31-1-9 when leading after two periods: a .756 winning percentage that’s 25th in the NHL, by far the lowest for any playoff team. So they’re still learning this whole winning thing. And yet Babcock has them in the playoffs.
Look, I have no idea why Babcock hasn’t won a Jack Adams. At this point he’s Al Pacino, wondering how the Academy missed him in “The Godfather Part II” and “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Serpico” and hoping that the 2017 Leafs are his “Scent of a Woman.”
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One reason he hasn’t won has been the assumption that the Detroit Red Wings were a machine and he was just walking around it with a clipboard in case one of the gears started sparking and smoking. Part of it is the Jack Adams Award’s slavish dedication to the obvious: ‘Hey this was a bad team and now it’s a good team and the only difference is PATRICK ROY!’
Part of it is, no doubt, Babcock’s utter lack of humility, which is actually one of this greatest attributes: Not only because he’s earned that swagger having accomplished what he has in the NHL and internationally, but because without he wouldn’t have been the first free agent who willfully accepted the challenge (and, well, the eight years of millions of dollars) to come to Toronto.
Much like it’s become increasingly impossible to deny Matthews the Calder and deny that the Leafs Are Actually Good, it’s hard to deny that Mike Babcock has done the best coaching job in the NHL this season, and should be rewarded as such.
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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
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