Mike Babcock
Mike Babcock
Michael "Mike" Babcock, Jr.is a Canadian professional ice hockey head coach, currently serving as head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League. He previously spent 10 seasons as head coach of the Detroit Red Wings, with whom he won the Stanley Cup in 2008 and helped to the Stanley Cup Playoffs every year during his tenure. He holds the record as winningest coach in Red Wings history, surpassing that of Jack Adams. He has also served...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth29 April 1963
extra
He's fine. We are just being extra careful.
dominant physically
A dominant player. But also a physically dominant player.
best bring great regular
Let's be honest, we had a great regular season, and the regular season's over. It you don't bring your best game, you don't win.
magic
He's got a little magic going right now.
battle everybody excited foundation great hard huge hung last locker nice opportunity people pictures playoffs quickly saying trying work year
I think everybody realizes that we had a great opportunity. But you find out quickly that last year was last year. There are now nice pictures of the playoffs hung up around the locker room, and people were saying nice things about us and patting us on the back all summer. But now we are trying to reestablish work habits, foundation and identity. I think it makes you more hungry, because we all know how hard it is to get there. It will be a huge battle for us and we are excited about the opportunity to try to get back there.
capable defensive game good gotten nice offensive plays team
He's good defensively, but (Monday) he made plays with the puck, which was nice to see. Sometimes as a defensive defenseman on an offensive team they always want you to do more than you're capable of doing. His game has gotten much better with the puck.
bottom few games help hockey line played ready steve tonight
The bottom line is, we didn't play Steve much the first few games he played. Tonight he played, and he was important. He played important. He's ready to go and help our hockey team.
defensive five four games good nights playing team
Four games in five nights and playing a good defensive team on the road, we must be doing something right.
advice group guys jimmy leadership league national played possibly team training tried
I wanted to have a competitive training camp. So we went through and put the lineup together. We used Jimmy Nill's advice on all the young guys because I don't know the young guys, and then we tried to get the guys who played in the national league and played on our team to be as competitive a group as we possibly could be, with leadership in all groups.
canada good imagine period saying wear
Can you imagine how good you must be for them to do that? This is Canada. They're saying you can't wear that number. You must be pretty good, and pretty good for a long period of time. How good must you be?
focus lead open shut start teams
Teams can shut you down if they get a lead and then they check, check, check, check, check. Well if we come out and get going, they've got to open it up to try to score. So that's a real focus for us - we have to start good.
bag both puck situations team time
You can try to bag the puck out of the zone, but we wouldn't be the team we are if we did. Those were both situations where we had time to make plays.
fake fortunate freeze good
He's got a good backhand, but the fake he made on his forehand to freeze the goalie, then to go to the shelf, showed us his real skill. We're real fortunate to have him.
expect good hard playoffs prepare shocked team
Just like everyone here, I'm shocked at our situation. It's hard to look at our team and think we didn't do a lot of good things to prepare for the playoffs and you would expect to have success.