Mike Babcock’s resume? With the Maple Leafs, his tenure didn’t add up

The Edmonton Oilers want Mike Babcock as their next coach, though they might want to take a look at the latter parts of his resume.

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Published Jun 11, 2026  •  4 minute read

Former Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock on the ice during a practice in 2019. Toronto Sun files

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“Mike Babcock’s resume speaks for itself.”

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That’s one thought that has been tossed into the conversation this week with the revelation that the Edmonton Oilers want the disgraced 63-year-old to be their next coach.

If Babcock’s resume does speak for itself, then the part that includes the failures in Toronto as coach of the Maple Leafs, some of a long run of early playoff eliminations for the Saskatchewan native, is muttering in whispers.

After coaching the Detroit Red Wings to a Stanley Cup in 2008, Babcock got the Wings to the final again the following spring, when they lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In the next 11 seasons, nothing.

And yet here the Oilers are, awaiting a National Hockey League investigation into Babcock from his brief time as coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2023. Babcock resigned before coaching a game with the Blue Jackets amid reports that he wanted to look at players’ personal photos on their phones and it made some uncomfortable.

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Babcock didn’t get to within a sniff of the Cup final in his last six years with the Wings (losing in the first round three times and in the second round three times) and in his first four with the Leafs (no playoffs in 2016 before three consecutive first-round losses).

We know what happened in Babcock’s fifth season in Toronto: He was fired a mere 23 games into what was the second half of the eight-year contract he signed in May 2015.

By the time Babcock was let go by Brendan Shanahan, the Leafs’ president at the time, on Nov. 20, 2019, in Scottsdale — where the Leafs were staying at a resort hotel before playing the Arizona Coyotes the following night — the bloom completely was off the rose with the veteran coach.

What was the Spezza incident?

That 2019-20 season started with a embarrassing incident brought on fully by Babcock and served as a cold reminder that checking the ego at the doors is something others do, not him.

In the days before the opener, at home on Oct. 2 against Ottawa, the Leafs’ lines were set in practice.

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Veteran Jason Spezza, on the cusp of making his debut with his hometown team in his 17th NHL season after signing a team-friendly deal that summer, was on the fourth line with Frederik Gauthier and Dmytro Timashov as the Leafs prepared for their first game against the visiting Senators.

On the morning of the game, Spezza was replaced on the fourth line by Nick Shore, as Babcock used the excuse that Spezza needed more time to work on the penalty kill.

In 25 years, others than perhaps for injury, we don’t recall a coach making a last-minute decision on a line when it had been different in the most-recent practices.

Babcock smashed his own explanation two nights later, putting Spezza into the lineup in Columbus, apparently enough time having passed for Spezza to get caught up on the PK to the point that he could be trusted to play again.

There was zero reason to humiliate Spezza, though it followed a pattern Babcock had set with other veterans in his past, including incidents with Mike Modano, Chris Chelios and Mike Commodore, among others, in Detroit.

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Several weeks after Babcock had been fired, a member of the Leafs’ management group said to us: “We saw the Spezza incident as a ‘F*** you’ to the front office.”

The Leafs beat the Sens and Blue Jackets in those first two games. They then won just seven of their next 21, and Babcock was canned after the Leafs lost six games in a row.

Upon being promoted from the Toronto Marlies, Sheldon Keefe guided the Leafs to a victory in four of their next five games.

The bigger issue in Toronto for Babcock was that despite the fanfare that came when he was hired in 2015, he was unable to move the Leafs past a certain point. Leafs Nation was led to believe the club was getting it right with Babcock. Wrong.

Babcock helped develop Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, and all were in their early 20s when Babcock was fired. There were greater steps for the youngsters to take and the Leafs team as a whole, yet Babcock couldn’t move the needle.

At the time, Shanahan called it the “magic question” as to why the Leafs were unable to meet expectations.

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Babcock bet on himself

As speculation bubbled about Babcock’s future before the Leafs let him go, he famously said to a group of us in Las Vegas that “I have always bet on Mike Babcock, I’ll continue to bet on him.”

He coached one more game with the Leafs — a 4-2 loss against the Golden Knights (Spezza happened to have a goal and an assist) — and has not stepped behind an NHL bench since.

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We’re not denying the positives in Babcock’s coaching career — the Cup win in Detroit, leading Canada to gold at the Winter Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi. It’s Hall of Fame stuff.

Babcock’s alleged terrible treatment of some players has been well-documented and you’d think that would be enough for the Oilers to second-guess themselves.

In pro sports, where what-have-you-done-for-me-lately often applies, it’s Babcock’s resume that comes up short.

That applies to anything after 2009, when the Wings played until June 12 and lost.

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