They say relationships are everything in business. It was a strong relationship that led Stanley Cup champion Mike Babcock back home to the Saskatchewan Huskies.
On the weekend the Huskies announced that Babcock would be taking over as coach of the men’s hockey team. A move that wouldn’t have happened without Chief Athletics Officer Dave Hardy.
“I taught Mike,” says Hardy. “I’ve known him since he was 13 or 14, knew the family pretty well.
“We managed to stay in contact through the years. Haven’t seen him much since he joined (the) Toronto (Maple Leafs). So I just took a chance. I phoned him–might have been Boxing Day–and we got caught up.
“I said ‘I got a hockey vacancy and I want to see if you want to come home and fill it.’ And he said ‘no’.”
Having caught up, they continued to talk from there. And ‘no’ turned into Saturday’s official ‘yes’.
“It became obvious that this was a real good fit for him and his family personally and an opportunity professionally,” says Hardy.
Babcock’s resume is far beyond what you would expect for a USports coach–17 seasons as an NHL head coach, a Stanley Cup win with the Detroit Red Wings in 2008, and the largest contract for a coach in league history.
It’s the stories that surfaced after Toronto fired him in 2019 that might give observers some pause.
Johan Franzen played 10 seasons under Babcock in Detroit. In 2019 he gave an interview to Swedish newspaper Expressen saying he was “terrified of being at the rink” while playing for Babcock.
“He’s a terrible person, the worst I have ever met. He’s a bully who was attacking people. It could be a cleaner at the arena in Detroit or anybody. He would lay into people without any reason,” Franzen told Expressen.
Hardy was well aware of the stories when it came to hiring Babcock.
“Sure it gives you pause,” Hardy says. “I think to a certain extent you have to know the man. I go back to relationships. You can’t survive in that business, coaching as many years successfully as he has, without respect from your players and your team.
“With respect to Franzen, (Babcock) said ‘You’re dealing with hundreds, different athletes in different high-pressure situations. You make difficult decisions. You try to manage people differently.’ And I think all of us would say that not every relationship we’ve had was worked out the way we would have wanted it.
“I think assessing how he deals with individual players is something that Mike has addressed and will address,” says Hardy.
Babcock officially takes over from the retiring Dave Adolph on May 1.
Babcock joins Derek Taylor on the Sports Cage on Tuesday to talk about taking over the Huskies men’s hockey team.
