The Red Wings have been eliminated and the NHL’s hottest Free Agent is about to hit the market. Free agency is a crazy time where good players get paid like great players and this guy won’t play 30 minutes a night, score 50 goals, or even go 50% on the faceoff dot and yet he’ll be the most sought after name on the market. Naturally, I’m talking about Mike Babcock who is set to become the highest paid coach in the National Hockey League, whether he leaves Detroit or not.
He has been the subject of speculation all year and the main front runners to secure his services are Detroit, Edmonton, and Toronto, if media speculation counts for anything (it probably doesn’t). It would seem that prying him out of Detroit will cost at least 5 Million per season and a lot of front office control based on what a few plugged in people have suggested, although we do not know this to be 100% accurate.
When the Salary Cap was put in place and the limit was set for the “Rich… clubs to spend on players the immediate logical jump was to say that the Haves would be able to outspend the Have-Nots in areas outside the realm of the Cap. Even a team like Edmonton whose smaller arena limits the money earned on game night could spend more than most based on overall revenue. Other clubs may have taken advantage of this more than the Oilers apparently have. For example it’s been said that the Oilers pay their scouts terribly and that just doesn’t make a lick of sense but certainly adds up when you see their results. Their last 3 head coaches were all Rookies on the job as well.
If Edmonton is willing to wade into the Babcock sweepstakes, and they are, then they are going to finally take advantage of having a healthy bottom line and an owner with deep pockets.
Babcock has won Olympic Gold, World Championship Gold, and the Stanley Cup as a Head Coach and is almost universally regarded as being the best at his craft. From 2005-2006 to 2010-2011 his Red Wings finished 1st in the Central Division 5 of 6 times. However, the Red Wings are getting older. This is a fact that has been known for quite some time. In fact, their fall has been predicted year after year and somehow they’ve remained very competitive (a testament to the job Babcock has done). That said, even Babcock has noted there’s an issue with the age of Detroit’s stars. Here’s a quote taken from Katie Strang’s article here.
“We are what we are. They have a young team that, they were bad here for long enough that they were able to rebuild and get good young players, and young players at key positions. Three of our best players are 34 [Niklas Kronwall], 35 [Henrik Zetterberg] and 37 [Pavel Datsyuk]. So any way you look at it, we’re a team that’s changed a ton of players, we’re a team that’s added a lot of youth to our lineup and, right now on the outside they don’t pick us as a Stanley Cup contender.We have lots of good, young players, no question about it. And we’ve got some good ones coming. But who’s going to replace [Datsyuk]? I don’t think [Datsyuk] is going anywhere right away, but that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to have big time players up the middle and on the back to be successful. So those are questions that our organization works toward, we’ve been drafting good, we’ve been developing good, but we’ve been winning too much. That’s the facts.…
It is very difficult not to read the quotes and connect the dots to a team like Edmonton. Babcock is worried about his Detroit team getting too old and there being a bubble that’s about to burst. His team has been too good for too long to pick up impact young players. Meanwhile, Edmonton has been so bad for so long that all they have are impact young players but have no history of winning.
Babcock can skip out on all the losing it takes to build a roster of great young players and still have all the great young players he wants. He just can’t do it in Detroit. If he wants to have power in the front office, there’s room in Edmonton where Peter Chiarelli is currently holding down both President of Hockey Ops and General Manager. Even if Craig MacTavish remains aboard as the VP Hockey Ops (or whatever title he gets now) there’s room for Babcock to hold a position that in all reality is directly underneath President/GM.
He can get paid, have control, skip the torture of losing, and have a stable of high end young forwards (and a couple defensemen in Nurse and Klefbom) all while coming back to Western Canada. He can do all of that as the next Head Coach of the Edmonton Oilers if he so desires.
He has a relationship with Nicholson and Chiarelli from his time with Hockey Canada. Pretty soon he’s going to get a phone call from an old friend with an offer that will be difficult to refuse. He’s going to be the highest paid coach in the NHL next year. It’s up to him to decide if he does that trying to keep an old Red Wings club treading water or trying to take an inexperienced Oilers club to the next level.
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