Mike Babcock slams shut door on doubter with his most perfect answer of the season

There’s been no shorage of angst and criticism around Mike Babcock playing Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl so much on the same line in Edmonton this year, especially as the Oilers have struggled mightily without either of the two players on the ice.

It all came to a boil in today’s press conference when a reporter asked Babcock point blank about the issue.

Question: “Mike, you’re six (wins) one (loss) and one (OT loss) despite multiple injuries at centre. Meanwhile, you’ve got two of the top centres on the planet playing on the same line — and to great effect. Does their success come at the expense of your other lines?”

And that’s when Babcock shut down this kind of doubt with his most perfect answer of the season.

“No,” he said forcefully and definitively.

And a moment later, “Anybody else?”

Why was this answer so perfect?

Because the National Hockey League isn’t a daycare for men with rules for caring and sharing set out by a committee. It’s a dog-eat-dog, violently competitive league, where you eat what you kill.

The NHL is not about great players propping up weak ones. As Babcock has said repeatedly this year it’s up to the depth players on his team to win battles themselves, to win pucks themselves, to play heavy hockey, and then to enjoy the fruits of what they’ve earned by advancing the puck to the offensive end where it’s much more fun to play.

Essentially, it’s not up to Connor McDavid to win pucks and battle through sticks and bodies so that Isaac Howard or Vasily Podkolzin or Alex Formenton can benefit from his work. It’s up to those players to win pucks and to battle through sticks and bodies, and earn the puck on their stick in the offensive zone.

I can see why Babcock rubs so many people the wrong way. His aggressive style that focuses on hard work and radical personal responsibility isn’t in tune with the Victim Olympics zeitgeist of our age.

At the same time, he makes it clear that he plays no favourites when it comes to demanding hard work and personal responsibility. No one is so special on his team that they don’t get the same instruction, as he made clear in answering another question about his two superstars, McDavid and Draisaitl.

Heading into the season both McDavid and Draisaitl said that they wanted Babcock to push them. A reporter followed up on this today, asking the coach, “What kind of push are you doing with them? How are you helping their game?”

“What I’m trying to do is I’m trying to have a standard, and that’s an Edmonton Oilers standard,” Babcock said. “This is the way play, and this is what we do, and this is how we can be successful. We are building out game.”

And that’s when Babcock made his critical point in regards to his treatment of his two stars: “And we’re doing the same with those guys (McDavid and Draisaitl). Like anybody, when you like what they do, you tell them. When you don’t like what they do, you try to help them do it right.”

In the end, Babcock said when he has a healthy roster, he might well break up McDavid and Draisaitl more often, but the team was in a spot where they needed to push hard. “I’m just going to just be like you guys. I’m going to watch and I’m going to sort it out as time goes on,” Babcock said. “Right now, though, to your point, it’s worked good for us on most nights so far.

McDavid have so far played 108 minutes together five-on-five in Edmonton’s first eight games. They’ve outscored the opposition 15-to-1.

Without either of them on the ice, the Oilers have been out-scored 11-to-6.

That adds up to 21 goals for and 12 against at 5-on-5 in these deployment situations using the current strategy.

Hard to argue that Babcock has got this wrong so far.