Back to the ol' Days: Leafs Hiring of Babcock Shows Team Cannot be out of Spotlight for Long

When Brendan Shanahan talked about the need for patience after the calamitous 2014-15 Maple Leafs season, you had to figure the Toronto of old would somehow get in his way.

The Leafs president talked about having the patience to do what's needed—developing through the draft—and about having the stomach to get through the task at hand in a city that feverishly desires a winner.

It sounded as if someone in the Leafs organization was finally ready to steer the ship in the right direction. It wasn't a sexy plan, but given the season that rivalled As The World Turns in its series of dramatic storylines, some calmer water was exactly what was needed in Toronto.

Exercising patience in their pursuit of a next coach appeared to be the route the Leafs would take—maybe target someone young, driven and unproven who could cut their chops and work with a largely young and unproven group of players.

Perhaps Toronto would take the Tampa Bay route and bring in someone with a winning pedigree in the minors like the Bolts did with Jon Cooper. Someone like the rising Jeff Blashill, a Calder Cup-winning coach of Detroit's AHL affiliate.

But that wouldn't be the Maple Leaf way. Even when Shanahan says one thing, warning that a full rebuild could take many years of losing before the team contended again, the built-in language of the Leafs says another: go big and go big now.

So they went as big as possible. By emptying their pockets at the 11th hour for Mike Babcock, a coach with a Stanley Cup and two Olympic gold medals on his resume, the Maple Leafs have changed the narrative of the next few seasons: They'll still struggle, but the organization wants fans to know that by hiring a serious and respected coach, at least it will take those few seasons seriously.

And in turn, the team expects to be taken seriously by outsiders.

This is a confusing move for the Leafs to make, and yet not confusing at all. The roster needs to be retooled and the team needs to get worse before it can get better. But Toronto was never going to go full tank mode as part of the rebuild. Witnessing Buffalo's inability to land Connor McDavid despite its best efforts to nosedive would scare any team from doing the same for a prospect even half as good.

Toronto's roster needs to develop trust in one another after an utterly miserable campaign, and it needs to be done as quietly as possible so young players don't wilt under the constant glare of expectant fans and media. A hiring like Blashill would've made sense by allowing a young, unproven coach to gel with young, unproven players and develop a strong nucleus together.

In Toronto, though, that sort of move does not come with nearly enough pomp and circumstance. The Leafs struggled to sell out games for the first time in years as fan apathy reached a new low. It was always known that the Leafs and their fans needed each other—the team needed them to keep paying for overpriced beer and tickets and fans needed the team to provide a glimmer of hope of better days ahead.

Which is why the optics of this move stink: at the first sign of trouble, namely the threat of fans not showing up in droves next season, Shanahan and company don't actually abandon their plan for patience. They don't trade young prospects or precious draft picks for aging stars a la past Leafs general manager John Ferguson Jr. But what the Leafs do is bring in the biggest star possible for the largest contract ever given to a coach as a means to remind the league that they are still relevant.

Babcock joins a team with pieces to build around in James van Riemsdyk, Nazem Kadri, Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner—young players with raw talent on fair contracts that would be welcomed on any NHL team under the right tutelage. They will now play under their third coach in two seasons and some may not survive under the tough-as-nails Babcock. The need to once again re-adjust their game could harm them in the long term.

Babcock will probably get more influence over the roster than most coaches, because if you're going to give a coach a rumoured $50 million over eight years, it can't be that hard to toss in some input for good measure.

"If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries," Bill Parcells once said in regards to having input as a coach come draft day, before he left the New England Patriots

The hiring is a bit of an oxymoron—just as Leafs fans were warming to the idea that they would be terrible for a few years as a means to eventually contend, expectations have now returned to their normally unnecessarily high standards.

The move causes more uncertainty as to how the Leafs will look on the ice in October. How will Babcock's strong approach to puck possession affect Leafs leading scorer Phil Kessel, himself with poor possession numbers off the puck?

Last season was a circus of unprecedented proportions in Toronto. It appeared for a second that it might get quieter next season, something that would've benefitted a team focused on drafting, developing and taking things nice and slow. But things just got a lot louder for the Maple Leafs, a team that should enjoy the quiet of the offseason now while it can.