Mike Babcock's Big Payday from Maple Leafs Signals New Era for NHL Coaches
Mike Babcock will earn more next season in his first year coaching the Toronto Maple Leafs than the NHL's all-time wins leader did for a large portion of his 35-year coaching career. Scotty Bowman won nine Stanley Cups as a coach; Babcock has one Cup to his name.
But there was not a trace of jealousy in the still-vibrant voice of 81-year-old Bowman when he was asked Wednesday about Babcock's consummated deal with the Leafs, an eight-year, $50 million contract, according to TSN's Darren Dreger.
"My first year in St. Louis (1967-68), I made $15,000," Bowman told Bleacher Report. "I was pretty happy with that."
Babcock's deal with Toronto was a shocker to the NHL, much more discussed in league circles than anything going on with the current conference finals. How much of a game-changer will it be for other coaches in the league—and maybe for those in other sports? Sportsnet Stats provided a list of the "highest-paid coaches by league":
The cost of living was a lot lower in Bowman's first year in St. Louis. Times have changed. Fair enough.
But now consider how much times have changed. Babcock and Todd McLellan signed new coaching contracts that, combined per year, are close to the entire player payroll of the Stanley Cup champion 1995-96 Colorado Avalanche of roughly $16 million, per the Associated Press (via ESPN.com). (McLellan, a former assistant to Babcock in Detroit, got a multiyear deal with Edmonton reportedly worth at least $3 million a year, per NHLNumbers.com (via Luke Fox of SportsNet).
Imagine what Bowman would have made today with his credentials back then. After three straight trips to the Cup final with St. Louis and one more year in which his team lost in the first round, Bowman had a disagreement with Blues management and took the head coaching job with the storied Montreal Canadiens. His salary for the 1971-72 Canadiens, which went 46-16-16?
"I got $30,000," Bowman told Bleacher Report.
Now for the more mind-boggling, times-have-changed numbers: By the 1975-76 season, with four years and one Cup win to his credit in Montreal, Bowman's teams then won the next four Stanley Cups. In that time, his salary increased from $50,000 per year to $90,000.
"I got a $10,000 raise with each Cup," Bowman said. "At the time, hey, I was pretty happy with it. Well, maybe I thought I was worth a little more."
How did a coach, who hasn't won a Stanley Cup since 2008, with Detroit, get such a massive contract?
Several factors, all of which proved that, if nothing else, Babcock is a man with extremely fortunate timing in life.
- Toronto is, by most accounts, the wealthiest team in the NHL. Hockey is a religion in Canada, and the Air Canada Centre is the sport's St. Peter's Basilica.
- In large part because of that, and the Maple Leafs' Stanley Cup playoff failures that date back to Bowman's first year in the NHL, the Maple Leafs are a very desperate team. You can't be the most popular team in Canada and keep getting away with playoff failure. The Leafs have had a succession of moderately paid coaches over recent decades, but this was their first "superstar" hire.
- Despite only one Cup to his credit since entering the NHL as a coach with Anaheim in 2002, Babcock has two Olympic gold medals as Canada's coach (2010 and 2014). In today's image-is-everything media world, Babcock is Canada's face of world domination in the time it has most counted. That is worth much currency (either in the Loonie or the American greenback) in a market like Toronto.
- He is a very good coach. His record, with Detroit and the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, is 527-285-19-119 (a .627 points percentage). As that old NFL coach Bill Parcells once said: "You are what your record says you are."
Only McLellan (.637 in seven years coaching San Jose) and Bruce Boudreau have a higher regular-season points percentage among active coaches with more than four years experience than Babcock.
Joel Quenneville, who has won two Stanley Cups with Chicago and is back in the conference finals, was previously the highest-paid coach at $2.7 million a year. His contract runs through the 2016-17 season.
With a possible third Cup on his resume by next month, what would his value be worth on the open market?
Maybe even Babcock would be jealous. Elliotte Friedman commented on Babcock's contract:
Babcock's record says it clearly: winner.
Yet, was he really worth that much money? While no one disputes he is a very good coach, there figures to be a very intense debate in the coming days, weeks and months about this signing. Some may disagree, but it's valuable to ask the media people who covered a player or coach for a long time about their take on them in personal and professional ways.
Here is the very blunt perspective relayed to Bleacher Report on Babcock from Ansar Khan, who has covered the Red Wings since the 1990s for MLive.com:
"I don't think I've ever met anyone as universally disliked as he is. He's very intense, very abrasive, very blunt. Oftentimes not pleasant to deal with. Can be very demeaning. Not just with the media but with everyone he comes into contact with—players, assistant coaches, team employees, front-office personnel.
"On the other hand, he's very enlightening. You can learn a lot about the game from talking to him and listening to him. And he's very quotable, a veritable gold mine at times. That makes our job much easier."
Here is what former NHL coach and general manager Doug MacLean, now an analyst for Rogers Sportsnet, had to say on the air Wednesday about the massive payday given to Babcock:
"This is a credibility thing for me. The Leafs had zero credibility, with their operation as far as I'm concerned. They desperately needed this. Give them credit; they went out and did it.
The $50 million was a huge part of it. I have no doubt about that. But they did it. And it should be a good day for Leafs fans. Babcock is the premier coach in the league. If he's not in the best, he's in the top five."
"
Here is perhaps a better summation of the situation from MacLean's colleague at Rogers Sportsnet, Elliotte Friedman, who said on the broadcast: "People debate, is he the best coach? Well, you can argue who it is, but he was the best available."
Exactly. Babcock was at the right place at the right time: a free-agent coach with a record of success, at a time when several NHL teams had vacancies at the coaching position. The richest franchise in the league, under pressure from the fans and media to turn things around, got into a bidding war with another desperate bottom feeder in the Buffalo Sabres.
In 1979, the Sabres—desperate for a turnaround then as now—hired Bowman away from the Canadiens at a salary of $200,000 a year (which included the added title of team general manager). At the time, that was an outrageous salary, although it was never made public until many years after.
Bowman never won a Cup in Buffalo. But he remained a winner, and in 1993 he got an even sweeter offer from Detroit Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch.
"I got a nice offer from him: $600,000 a year," Bowman told Bleacher Report. "My last year in the league, I was getting a million. I was the first to crack a million a year as a coach."
That's not chump change still, even to a guy like Babcock. But, times have definitely changed.
"I think it'll be good for a lot of coaches in bigger markets," Bowman said. "There are a lot of good, young teams coming up, and the coaches who win with them are going to benefit even more. Coaches are maybe more valuable than some might have thought."
