Dan Robinson and Katie Strang put together an article.

I wanted to read this so bad. I didn't have the time.

Profiling Mike Babcock. Yeah. And I think it was because of that quote that it was like, Yeah, maybe we should talk about him a little bit.

Well, he's basically a pariah. He's kicked out of the lead.

Except that he's not.

Well, meanwhile, all these coaches still speak to him and revere him. So he's very much still influential.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's what's interesting. In the article, and I won't repeat everything in the article because there's some very interesting stories.

Read it verbatim.

The quote The issue is he's still a powerful guy, said one of Mike Babcock's former players, who, like some others, asked not to be named because he fears reprisal from within the NHL. That's crazy. And he's connected with a lot of influential people. So Mike Babcock, while no team will hire him right now, is very much all the coaches all still talk. The reason that coaches's salaries are going up is because Mike and a few of the other ones got together and said, We're going to start negotiating a little bit harder together under the same agency, which makes a lot of sense business-wise. But also, this is a guy who is still very much... We talked about, who is the LA coach that the Leifs interviewed? He was a San Jose coach, and he was an Edmondson coach.Dua Lippo.Not Dua Lippo.Dua Lippo. Seth Meyers.No.Todd McClellan.Todd McClellan. I'm not a Todd guy because he's a Babcock disciple. You said what, Steve? They all are.

They all are. It's Babs. I'm trying to think of the cabal. It's Babs. It's Hitchcock. I don't remember if Joel Quinville is in there. Montgomery obviously talks to him. Is Cooper in there?

I don't know. I don't know.

I'm trying to... Bill Peters was in there. Certainly. Can't think of them all offhand, but yeah, they all talk.

So one of the quotes from the articles just at the beginning, he got away with a lot of stuff in an era where nobody really brought light to any of the stuff that he did. Couple of revelations from the article that I think you'll find very interesting. The Mitch Marner story, which we all know at this point, where Mitch was famously told to write down who he thought wasn't working hard. He put his own name on the list, and then he put Tyler Bozac and Nazem Khadri's. And he thought that list was going to be private between him and Babs, and he was trying to take responsibility for where he was at. Mike then shows that to Tyler Bozac and Nazem Khadri. And Mitch was apparently so mortified by that that it brought him to tears. And I can understand why. The guy is 18, 19 years old, and It's an extraordinarily incredibly shitty thing to do. Here's what predates that.

It's fascinating stuff.

And this part is- People act like the first bad thing he ever did was with the Leaps.

Oh, no. Red Wings fans got something for you.

So we've talked about this on the show, and we knew this story before it really got out there. But Mark Hunter, who was the head of Leef Scouting at the time, wanted to draft Mitch Marty. He co-owns the Nights. He knew how good Mitch was, et cetera, et cetera.

And it was great scouting.

Fantastic pick. And also, who would know him better? Right.

I mean, regardless of what you think of Mitch and how it's gone, dude scores like 90 points every year. He's fucking great.

Babcock, according to the article, made it clear to team Hockey Ops that he wanted a different player. That's not what we've heard. What we heard is something to the effect of-We're not drafting children. We're drafting men. Which is essentially the same thing.

Yes. He didn't want to draft Mitch Marner.

There is a story Story earlier on in this article that actually mentions a friend of the show, Jason York, German Titoff, and Danny Lambert from the Anaheim Ducks and how Mike treated them.

Oh, I've talked to Yorkchop about it.

Now, it's completely out there now, but I'll let you read it in the article because it's really good. The article is about how Mike likes to single out players, embarrass them, and there's another one I'll mention, single out players and embarrass them. If you're on his shit list, then he's the guy that he'll just come back and treat you like crap. That's what he did. Mitch Marner was on this list until Mitch Marner played his way off of it. After the first period of Marner's first preseason game, the year he was drafted, Babcock approached him in the tunnel and told him he was being sent back to Junior. Rather than sharing the news in a private meeting. I'm quoting directly from the article. Babcock's approach relaying the disappointing news after a single period, was viewed by some in the organization as unprofessional and callous. Later that fall, Franky Corrado was picked up on waivers. Then Franky tells his story about Mike told him, he said, I have no idea who you are. Fuck off. Corrado remembers Babcock telling him. He then told Corrado to meet him in his office at the Leifs Training Facility the next day at 08:00 AM.

Corrado arrived early, knocked on Babcock's door, but the coach told him he didn't have time to see him. Corrado waited for an hour and a half, but Babcock never made time.

Does that not perfectly line up with the Blue Jackets story? Yeah, come and see me for lunch. You got to drive all this way. All right, show me your phone, dickhead. I'm going to look through your phone. Yeah, beat it. It's just a power thing.

Peter Holland lost his position to Byron Frayze in 1617. Hoping to discuss the demotion, Holland went to leave practice early. He found Babcock Babcock eating his breakfast, and the coach told him he'd find him as soon as he was done. Nearly an hour later, Babcock called him into the office. He said, You're here to remind me that you're still on the team, but you've lost your job, and all you can do right now is show up in practice. Holland recalls Babcock saying, Now tell me what you came here to tell me so you can go home and you could tell your family and your agent that you said what you wanted to say. What the fuck? And then before the Western Canada road trip, and I remember this in November, Leef's GM, Lou Lamorello, told Holland he'd be staying back while the team worked out a trade for a market where he'd get more playing time. At a news conference in Edmonton the next day, Babcock gave reporters the impression it was Holland's decision for him not to travel with the team. He said Holland met with Lou, had his agent on the phone and decided he wasn't coming on the trip, which is decidedly not what happened.

What a dick.

And then he shit-talked Holland after.

Yeah. It's interesting now, and I want to bring this up for a couple of reasons. First off, Mike Babcock shouldn't be in charge of people. He says at the end of the article, Oh, I wouldn't want to be a coach in the NHL again. Bullshit. Yes, you absolutely would. You would die to be a coach in the NHL. Bullshit.

It's not about his hockey mind. It's his inability to handle power.

Yes. Yeah.

I think to just support your claim, there's the part in there about the MLSI staff that he used to chastise daily. I'll just read that little sentence there. Please. But Babcock- Read the article. Babcock was known to chastise support staff workers if his routine was derailed or the environment didn't meet his standards. Former players and employees said, he often focused on one person in the office each day and hounded them repeatedly. When you work for Babs, everyone is on their toes. No one is spared, a former staffer said. So he'd literally just walk in the office and just hound people and be rude to them for no reason. This guy shouldn't be in charge of people, as he said.

Early in Babcock's tenure with the Leifs, after team trainers completed player evaluations ranking work ethic on a three on a scale, red, yellow, and green, he called players into a meeting with the team's training staff and projected the red reviews on the wall for all to see. Training staff said that they had been led to believe the evaluations would be confidential. There's a bunch of other stuff in this article, specifically the Anaheim story. I had no idea how he treated those guys. I had no idea it was that bad.

You haven't even mentioned a Detroit story, which is crazy.

Well, and there's an Erichson one that we could talk about. But again- Without reading the entire-Yeah, it's behind the paywall. I'm giving you the tease here. Part of this made me sit back this morning and think, Okay, I still disagree with how it was handled in 2019, but I understand a lot more now why the Mitch Marner camp were as hard as they were on the leaves in that negotiation. Because if you remember, Bab Babcock. Yeah, he was still the coach, but you remember Babcock demoted him to the fourth line for a while. For two games. For two games. And it was a big thing was made of it. But he didn't get his rookie bonuses because Lou said, I'm bound to determine no one's getting their rookie bonuses. So what did Austin Matthews do? He waited till August and said, I'm not playing for you unless you give me the rookie bonuses.

The difference is I'm the first overall pick, stupid.

Yeah. So he gave it to me. And Mitch said, I'm the fourth overall pick. It's not that different.

It's different.

That's how he would look at it. It's different enough. And I can understand a little bit more because at the time, what we were saying was, wait a second, because what came out, what kept filtering out through particular reporters who the Marner camp were hooked into was, well, they feel mistreated by the Leifs organization. And as fans, your first reaction is, This guy's the most popular guy in the team. What do you mean mistreated? Everybody loves this guy. Everybody's buying this guy's jersey. Steve, you're doing video about Marner drinking seven ups and then going bonkers. Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew, that's what it was.

Dude, the Marner jar. Yeah. Steve's so hard on Marner. No one remembers the Marner jar. The Marner jar was... Marner was having a crazy breakout year when he was due for a contract extension. I invented the Marner jar, which was basically you have to put money in a jar every time you go, Oh, no. Mitch's number is going to be so high. No, you want it to be high because if it's high, that means he's performing incredibly, which he did. Then someone made a Marner jar website night, and the money went to, was it sick kids? Yeah. I can't remember. It raised thousands of dollars because of how incredible this player was. I had a year long bit about how incredible this player was, and no one should complain about the numbers.

When I look at this story, specifically, I can understand how a representative, a senior member of this organization mistreated this player, and how, as a father myself, I I would be upset on my son's behalf for how this team treated my championship-winning MVP son, who came into the NHL and produced right away.

Right away. He had 60 plus points as a rookie.

And I probably could have had more. My whole thing in this is, listen, do I still think that they mishandled that negotiation? Yes. Oh, yeah. Unquestionably so. I think the least also mishandled it, too, by caving. You should have let him sit, and you should have got the number down.

What does the number come in at if the Leifs fire Babcock when Dubas, allegedly, wanted to fire him? No, you need him to coach until mid November. We need him to get fired when we all knew he was going to get fired anyway. I had that read from the very fucking beginning. I had that read from the moment Boston eliminated.

What is concerning to me, though, is how many guys like Jim Montgomery are openly cool with this guy. I am openly cool with this guy, and there are stories in here, guys, that are going to make your fucking skin crawl.How long is the article?The article is... I don't know how many... I don't measure word count or whatever. It's long.How many scrolls?It's Katie Strang and Dan Robinson. So you know that it's like... They both write long. You always call... Well, because it's an exposé. Yeah. So you call Rick Westhead sometimes the Grim reaper, right? It's like when he comes out, it's like, oh-oh. And I would say I think Katie is in that realm as well.

Low-key Dan.

Low-key Dan. Dan, for sure. I wanted to highlight this because I do think some of the Mitch Marner frustration comes from that. I think it's important as a least podcast that we like, Hey, that's new information. We haven't seen that before.

Oh, absolutely. No, absolutely. It's all part of... Listen, if he gets traded-It will be a shame. Well, it'll be a shame, but I plan on doing a timeline because Sometimes you look at what he's accomplished and what he hasn't, but what he's accomplished and why so many fans are excited for him to get traded, you have to go back and be like, How did we get here? This is one of the most popular players. Happy, go, lucky. What personal controversies has he really had? You know what I mean? He wasn't Austin going and having a night on the town and frigging, trying car doors and shit. This is a guy who shows up, throws up a billion points, likes to crack jokes. Ilyas Samsonov, people are talking about how he stinks, and he's talking about how he believes in him. He talks about how Pontus Holmberg is his favorite player. He's It seems like he's nothing but positive, at least with his teammates. They talk about how he's a great human being. Why is there this dark cloud surrounding this player? It can't just be he doesn't get it done in the playoffs.

Well, it's not. Or we know that. We know it's part of it is the negotiation. Part of it is the play. And I think part of it is- His cornball agent. I think that people are not thrilled with his camp.

Yeah.

And by the way, he chooses to employ that camp. So he has to bear that responsibility.

I wish he stuck up for himself, and I wish people would stick up for him. I think I'll leave it at that. No, you're not.

I'll leave it at that. And so at that. I just think that this is an article you should should.