Coach Mike Babcock

[rdowdall]

If you'll forgive a bit of a tortured analogy, if the building of a team can be compared to starting a company then hiring a GM and that GM having a strategy can be likened to actually deciding on a product or service. You're deciding what the company will actually sell. Hiring a great coach is like hiring a great salesperson. He's not going to decide the success of the venture, lousy products are lousy products, but it can only ever be a good thing.

Wouldn't it be more like hiring a great VP to direct your product?  Sales people very rarely have input/impact on the product that they are selling, whereas a coach is expected to mold the team and make decisions on who plays when, therefore impacting the product, much like a VP would do with decisions on who to hire, and who does what job.  The VP may not manufacturer the product, but they make the decision on how the product is going to be manufactured.

 

[Kin]

Wouldn't it be more like hiring a great VP to direct your product?  Sales people very rarely have input/impact on the product that they are selling, whereas a coach is expected to mold the team and make decisions on who plays when, therefore impacting the product, much like a VP would do with decisions on who to hire, and who does what job.  The VP may not manufacturer the product, but they make the decision on how the product is going to be manufactured.

Well:

A) there's a line between torturing an analogy and beating it to death and you crossed it
B) I don't really know what "directing" a product means.
C) I think you're significantly overrating the impact a coach will have on what a team looks like and, ultimately, wins and losses. Bringing in good players is going to be by far the biggest factor in a team's success and that's not going to be Babcock's job.

 

[herman]

A couple of standout soundbites that give me confidence in the years to come:

• Babcock is here to build a Cup contender that will be knocking on the door until it opens, not just a playoff team
• Babcock considers himself a teacher, and others have noted that he is one of the few coaches that develops the entire team to play the right way
• Babcock asked for an out clause just to see the Leafs reaction and was pleased when they said "No way" -- everyone is in it for the long haul
• Babcock values how the team plays more than what the game-to-game result is -- echoing Dubas' "play the right way" mantra
• Babcock highly values Mark Hunter's talent recognition and wants to get him more picks to work with

There were other noteworthy remarks from the end of season presser after the Wings were ousted that kind of hinted that Babcock wanted to be part of a build, not just a perennial playoff team.

 

[rdowdall]

Wouldn't it be more like hiring a great VP to direct your product?  Sales people very rarely have input/impact on the product that they are selling, whereas a coach is expected to mold the team and make decisions on who plays when, therefore impacting the product, much like a VP would do with decisions on who to hire, and who does what job.  The VP may not manufacturer the product, but they make the decision on how the product is going to be manufactured.

Well:

A) there's a line between torturing an analogy and beating it to death and you crossed it
B) I don't really know what "directing" a product means.
C) I think you're significantly overrating the impact a coach will have on what a team looks like and, ultimately, wins and losses. Bringing in good players is going to be by far the biggest factor in a team's success and that's not going to be Babcock's job.

A) You made the analogy in a public forum.  I don't see the rules on when we can and can't comment on your analogies posted anywhere. 
B) Directing a product means planning what features go in when and what defects need to be fixed at what time, and figuring out the who is going to work on the specific pieces of the product.
C) If a coach doesn't have an impact, why hire one?  How would people feel if the Leafs had hired Tortorella yesterday?  Also I never argued that players weren't the most important.  I think you re undervaluing the impact a coach can have by comparing it to someone who has very little input in to how a product is developed.  Coaches have styles of play, and systems.  A bad coach could ruin a good team.  If a coach came in and move Kessel to defence, I think we would all question that decision.

One of the things that they showed on sportsnet after Babcock was hired was a clip between the Nashville Predators and the Detroit Red Wings.  The Predators had a 5 -3 advantage late in the game. Typically teams send out one forward and two d-men in that situation, not always but typically.  Babcock sent out two forwards and a d-man.  His reasoning was that Weber and Jones had been killing them all night and he figured that if he took the point men away, the power play would sputter.  That 5 on 3 had one shot.

So in the above situation, there is no way that I can prove that his decision had an impact on that powerplay.  It sounds logical, but the truth is, if he had done it the standard way as well, the outcome may have been the same.  It may have been worse.  It may have been better, in that if he had gone with a 1 - 2 formation they would have allow 0 shots.  There is no way to assign a numerical value of the impact of his decision because we don't know what the other decisions would have yielded. 

However, he made a decision, and through making a decision, he had an effect.  That effect has an impact on the game.

 

[Kin]

Babcock is here to build a Cup contender that will be knocking on the door until it opens, not just a playoff team

You know, I was thinking about Babcock saying this. I dismissed it initially as sort of being your standard press conference "I want to win a Stanley Cup" stuff but the more I think about it the more I think it reflects another bad assumption made about Babcock during the process.

One of the things I think is going to be very interesting over the next few years is that we're really going to start seeing the ways that the cap can handcuff a good team. We've seen it to some extent before in minor ways, how Chicago has had to reboot a little over the years and how Pittsburgh has been sort of handcuffed in adding to their roster, but we're going to start seeing it in big ways soon. Chicago is going to lose significant pieces this off-season and even they aren't really going to be feeling it because they still have significant pieces signed at below market cap hits because of the old CBA rules.

So the idea that Babcock would see a team that was already built and maybe just in need of a few tweaks or his special brand of magic as a better bet for another cup may have rested on this flawed notion that we're going to see teams be and stay good for 6 or 7 years at a time. If a team is already a contender, or close to one, they've probably already got significant flaws that they can't spend money on or will develop them shortly.

The best way to win another cup may very well be to get in on the ground floor of a process and be on the entire ride. Those first few years where the team is getting major contributions from elite talent but not paying them much are going to be critical.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

I think it's fantastic that he's here and committed to the total overhaul.  I would just point out the Burke sounded every bit as confident, knowledgeable, and directed when he came on, and hopes were just as high. 

I think there's an important distinction though. Hiring Burke was seen as a drastic shift in direction for the franchise, where not only would his hiring result in a markedly different roster than the one JFJ could build but a markedly different one than any of the other talented candidates might produce. As soon as Burke started talking about "retooling" and how the team really needed to get tougher, red flags were legitimately raised there.

Babcock isn't the same way. I think he's a good coach, maybe even one of the best, but I don't think that the team in two or three years, just in terms of personnel, is going to look drastically different than it would if the Leafs had ended up with Bylsma or Blashill.

If you'll forgive a bit of a tortured analogy, if the building of a team can be compared to starting a company then hiring a GM and that GM having a strategy can be likened to actually deciding on a product or service. You're deciding what the company will actually sell. Hiring a great coach is like hiring a great salesperson. He's not going to decide the success of the venture, lousy products are lousy products, but it can only ever be a good thing.

Yeah it's different because Burke was selling a change in philosophy whereas Babcock is buying into the vision that upper management has already sold the board on.  While we might not know the specifics of it, we know enough from what we've been told and especially from the press conference that it's not going to be a Burke-style "I don't want a 5-year rebuild" situation.  If it takes awhile, it takes awhile.  Babcock stressed in a number of interviews yesterday that he made sure that Shanahan/the board have his back when the team is losing and people are calling for heads.

So I don't think Babcock signals any grand change - other than maybe in legitimacy to people around the league, he's a wanted commodity, I'm sure people want to be associated with him - but the changes to building, etc were already in place before this.

 

[Kin]

A) You made the analogy in a public forum.  I don't see the rules on when we can and can't comment on your analogies posted anywhere.

Yes, that was a joke. Lighten up, Francis.

B) Directing a product means planning what features go in when and what defects need to be fixed at what time, and figuring out the who is going to work on the specific pieces of the product.

Ok, then, no. I think my analogy is far more apt than yours.

C) If a coach doesn't have an impact, why hire one?  How would people feel if the Leafs had hired Tortorella yesterday?  Also I never argued that players weren't the most important.  I think you re undervaluing the impact a coach can have by comparing it to someone who has very little input in to how a product is developed.  Coaches have styles of play, and systems.  A bad coach could ruin a good team.  If a coach came in and move Kessel to defence, I think we would all question that decision.

There's a lot to unpack here so I'll try to do it in point by point form. First, saying that you're overrating the impact of a coach isn't saying the coach has no impact. Just a drastically less important one than you're saying they have. Secondly, I don't know about Tortorella. Third, the issue is one of marginal value. So, yes, Babcock might have a significant edge over someone who's so fundamentally stupid and self-defeating that they would move Kessel to a position he's never played as a professional in his late twenties. That's a bit of a straw man though because nobody like that would ever be hired to coach a NHL team. Babcock's value isn't in his being better than a coach who would make his players play without sticks, either.

Most guys who are going to be hired for a NHL job are good coaches. The difference between someone like Babcock and someone like Byslma or Boucher is a marginal one.

 

[Frank E]

I remember discussing something along these lines a few years ago, and I argued that Pittsburgh should have traded Malkin (a few years ago) for a sweet draft pick/prospect combo.  I suggested that because they were having trouble fitting in a strong enough supporting cast under the cap, and they didn't have enough cheap young talent coming up and ready to contribute.

I think that to be successful, at least consistently successful, teams are going to have to consider trading their high-end talent if they don't have the timing right with a young (cheaper) talented and contributing supporting cast.  I'm not saying that they need to trade all of their high-end talent, but maybe a piece or two, to essentially reset the clock and ensure that when the timing is right, they can take a strong run at a cup.  These trades wouldn't go over too well with fans, but I think they're probably going to need to happen for teams to remain Stanley Cup threats longer term.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I remember discussing something along these lines a few years ago, and I argued that Pittsburgh should have traded Malkin (a few years ago) for a sweet draft pick/prospect combo.  I suggested that because they were having trouble fitting in a strong enough supporting cast under the cap, and they didn't have enough cheap young talent coming up and ready to contribute.

I see what you're saying, but would that have really fixed Pittsburgh's biggest problem? Because to me that's their abysmal drafting/developing record. Trading a top-10 player in the world away for picks/prospects isn't going to help them if they can't properly use those picks/prospects.

 

[Kin]

I remember discussing something along these lines a few years ago, and I argued that Pittsburgh should have traded Malkin (a few years ago) for a sweet draft pick/prospect combo.  I suggested that because they were having trouble fitting in a strong enough supporting cast under the cap, and they didn't have enough cheap young talent coming up and ready to contribute.

I don't know that trading Malkin ever could have realistically done what you're talking about. The problem teams will face isn't going to be having 9 million dollar players who they're paying 9 million dollars. It's going to be in their overpaying other players who they kept around because, you know, they're successful and weren't pro-active in making changes. MA Fleury is a much bigger obstacle to the Penguins depth than Malkin is.

And to be honest, I don't think there is a solution for it. I think this problem isn't just a by-product of the CBA, it's what the CBA was designed for. A team that's really good in the drafting/development process will buy themselves time maybe but the idea behind parity is that you see a lot of turnover at the top. A hard cap and very little flexibility to fix mistakes will bury everyone eventually.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Yeah Pittsburgh should really not be paying Fleury a cap hit of $5.75 M to put up pretty middle of the road numbers.  Could probably find comparable stats for much cheaper and be able to improve in other areas.

It's not a matter of having two players too highly paid - look at Chicago.  Toews and Kane both have cap hits higher than Malkin/Crosby, but Chicago has drafted/dealt much, much better (but they're also now paying Crawford way too much).

 

[CarltonTheBear]

It's not a matter of having two players too highly paid - look at Chicago.  Toews and Kane both have cap hits higher than Malkin/Crosby, but Chicago has drafted/dealt much, much better (but they're also now paying Crawford way too much).

Toews and Kane's big cap hits don't take into effect until next season though, so Chicago really hasn't felt the damage those might do. And with the cap not sky-rocketing like they probably thought it would it looks like it will do some pretty big damage. It's expected that Oduya won't be back and Sharp will have to be traded. They can probably take the Sharp hit, but losing Oduya from a defence corps that's already pretty top-heavy is going to be tough.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

It's not a matter of having two players too highly paid - look at Chicago.  Toews and Kane both have cap hits higher than Malkin/Crosby, but Chicago has drafted/dealt much, much better (but they're also now paying Crawford way too much).

Toews and Kane's big cap hits don't take into effect until next season though, so Chicago really hasn't felt the damage those might do. And with the cap not sky-rocketing like they probably thought it would it looks like it will do some pretty big damage. It's expected that Oduya won't be back and Sharp will have to be traded. They can probably take the Sharp hit, but losing Oduya from a defence corps that's already pretty top-heavy is going to be tough.

Ah they don't?  Well then.  I thought those were signed awhile back.

Ignore my ravings then.

 

[Frank E]

I remember discussing something along these lines a few years ago, and I argued that Pittsburgh should have traded Malkin (a few years ago) for a sweet draft pick/prospect combo.  I suggested that because they were having trouble fitting in a strong enough supporting cast under the cap, and they didn't have enough cheap young talent coming up and ready to contribute.

I see what you're saying, but would that have really fixed Pittsburgh's biggest problem? Because to me that's their abysmal drafting/developing record. Trading a top-10 player in the world away for picks/prospects isn't going to help them if they can't properly use those picks/prospects.

I guess I'd argue that Malkin would return a pretty fantastic package of a high 1st pick and a blue chip prospect, and those players could become contributors in a couple of years, while still on the cheaper contracts.  I'm not saying that it'll make up for all of the lousy development or drafting, but I am saying that high first round pick and an elite'ish prospect would certainly mitigate some of that lousy drafting/draft position.  If you had strong development and drafting at tougher draft positions (which isn't easy or super common), you could really be that much more competitive vs. your cap spend.

To Nik's point, Fleury was a problem, but he was essentially untradable at that point, and was obviously contributing to the problem of no cap room for a stronger contributing cast.  There really isn't anything you can do with over-paid players...it's going to happen, all teams have one or two.  I would hope that a stronger GM can minimize this, though I doubt prevent it from ever happening.  That's why I picked Malkin instead.  I have to think he'd be worth a top 10 pick and a blue chipper (for lack of a better term) to one of 10 teams that were looking to take a run over the next few years (again, at that point).

We'll never really know if it would have helped the Pens, but I just think that putting this sort of process in place might be a way of remaining competitive and flexible, and not putting all your eggs into the 4 or 5 year window of opportunity, then rebuilding again for another 5.

 

[Kin]

To Nik's point, Fleury was a problem, but he was essentially untradable at that point, and was obviously contributing to the problem of no cap room for a stronger contributing cast.  There really isn't anything you can do with over-paid players...it's going to happen, all teams have one or two.  I would hope that a stronger GM can minimize this, though I doubt prevent it from ever happening.

But that's my point. Not that they should have traded Fleury but that what's going to be separate teams in terms of remaining competitive. It's not even that Fleury has had years where he's looked downright bad it's that whenever a team is successful there'll be a tendency to re-sign guys and give into their demands because "they contribute to a winning culture" or they're a big part of the locker room or best friends with Sid Crosby or whatever.

What I'm saying is that NHL teams are going to have to start acting like NFL teams and looking at guys who had good years at a discount for them, who very well may be good in the future and shaking their hands as they walk out the door because they think they might be able to get a comparable contribution on the cheap.

 

[rdowdall]

Yes, that was a joke. Lighten up, Francis.

You are posting in written word without inflection, and I don't know you from a hole in the ground.  Use an emoticon.  Just one please.  You don't need to overdo it, I'll pick it up from one.

B) Directing a product means planning what features go in when and what defects need to be fixed at what time, and figuring out the who is going to work on the specific pieces of the product.

Ok, then, no. I think my analogy is far more apt than yours.

Yes because I know a lot of coaches who don't decide who to put in the roster or not to put in a roster, or who to play where or when.  I mean most of them just show up and look pretty behind the bench <- notice the emoticon.  Take it for what you will.  It's not that funny of a joke.  The emoticon is not provided to show the amount of laughter that I expect one to take from my comment, but rather that my comment should be taken lightheartedly.

There's a lot to unpack here so I'll try to do it in point by point form. First, saying that you're overrating the impact of a coach isn't saying the coach has no impact. Just a drastically less important one than you're saying they have. Secondly, I don't know about Tortorella. Third, the issue is one of marginal value. So, yes, Babcock might have a significant edge over someone who's so fundamentally stupid and self-defeating that they would move Kessel to a position he's never played as a professional in his late twenties. That's a bit of a straw man though because nobody like that would ever be hired to coach a NHL team. Babcock's value isn't in his being better than a coach who would make his players play without sticks, either.

Most guys who are going to be hired for a NHL job are good coaches. The difference between someone like Babcock and someone like Byslma or Boucher is a marginal one.

Sorry your pressed for time.  You probably won't like this post either then.

If you are the best general in the world and you only have 100 soldiers, you are going to lose to the general that has 10000, regardless of the skill of that opposing general.

If you are the best general in the world, and you have 10000 soldiers, and you are going against a general that has 10000 soldiers, and those soldiers are of all equal skill level, then the better general is probably going to win ( I will explain the probably below ).

If you are the best general in the world and you have 10000 soldiers and you are going against a general who has 10000 soldiers, and they are a little bit better than you, the better general still may win and it because of their choices, and combat tatics. 

If you are the best general in the world, and you have the 10000 best soldiers in the world, then you are probably going to win against a slightly less quality of general with slightly less quality of 10000 soldiers.

The probably is because there is no accounting for luck, karma, cosmic fate, what have you.

So now to apply that to the NHL.  And I am pulling these distributions out of a hat, just for time sake.

Lets say there are 6 upper echelon teams, 18 middle of the pack teams and 6 teams that are really bad. 

When the 6 upper echelon teams play the 6 bad teams, then the upper echelon team is probably going to win.  Injuries and luck play a factor of course.  I agree, not amount of coaching is going to increase the chances of the bad team winning over the good team.  I would say that it may improve the optics of the loss.  For example rather than getting blown out 6-0, if your coach is smart, he may implement a plan that limits that to 3 - 0.  But the loss is still a loss.

When the 18 middle of the pack teams play the 6 bottom place teams, they are more likely going to win, but there is a chance that the bottom place team may win.  Again luck and injuries play a factor.  Can the coach come up with a game plan that gives his team a better chance to win?  Yes, I think he can.  Do I think that Babcock has a better skill of coming up with game plans than say Boucher or Hitchcock.  Yes I think he does.

This brings us to the final set, of when the 6 bottom place teams play one another.  So here, you can't really handicap it. The players on both teams become a wash.  Both teams will have strengths and weaknesses.  It will come down to player utilization and how the strengths of a team are used and the weaknesses of the other team are exploited.  I think Babcock has an edge in this category over Boucher and Hitchcock as well.

My issue with you saying that a coach has very little to no impact is that you don't have proof to back that up, and I agree that I have no conclusive proof to support my theory otherwise.  If Babcock had been in St. Louis, would the have made it to the second round?  Would they have one the cup?  Would they have missed the playoffs?  Your position seems to be that the exact same thing would have occured.  All other factors staying the same, what would have happened?  If it's not exactly the same then the coach has an impact.  And yes, missing the playoffs vs making them, and making the second round rather than losing in the first in my mind is a big difference in impact brought about by changing one piece on the team. 

This is why I have to present my line of thinking and say "This is what makes one coach better than another and why I think they can have an impact of the game".  It frustrates me that you insistence that this point of view is uneducated, silly, rooted in fantasy, and obviously proposed by someone who has never watched a game of hockey in his life when you have no conclusive proof to back it and it's based on your opinion of how hockey games are won.  It's not what you are saying, it's how you are saying it.

I think Babcock is a better coach that Boucher or Hitchcock because of what I have been told.  That's it, that's all I got.  I've never met the man.  People in papers, on the radio and the T.V. have presented me with examples of why he is a great coach.  Whether it's the way that he eliminated Stamkos from the first round, the Nashville example I posted, the examples of how he delegates work to his assistants and communicates with the players so that they know their roles and what they are supposed to do on the ice.  I have been told that other coaches don't do those things as well as Babcock, and that those things matter when it comes to playing the game of hockey, which in my mind means that it can have an impact on the outcome of the game.

 

[herman]

Babcock is here to build a Cup contender that will be knocking on the door until it opens, not just a playoff team

You know, I was thinking about Babcock saying this. I dismissed it initially as sort of being your standard press conference "I want to win a Stanley Cup" stuff but the more I think about it the more I think it reflects another bad assumption made about Babcock during the process.

One of the things I think is going to be very interesting over the next few years is that we're really going to start seeing the ways that the cap can handcuff a good team. We've seen it to some extent before in minor ways, how Chicago has had to reboot a little over the years and how Pittsburgh has been sort of handcuffed in adding to their roster, but we're going to start seeing it in big ways soon. Chicago is going to lose significant pieces this off-season and even they aren't really going to be feeling it because they still have significant pieces signed at below market cap hits because of the old CBA rules.

So the idea that Babcock would see a team that was already built and maybe just in need of a few tweaks or his special brand of magic as a better bet for another cup may have rested on this flawed notion that we're going to see teams be and stay good for 6 or 7 years at a time. If a team is already a contender, or close to one, they've probably already got significant flaws that they can't spend money on or will develop them shortly.

The best way to win another cup may very well be to get in on the ground floor of a process and be on the entire ride. Those first few years where the team is getting major contributions from elite talent but not paying them much are going to be critical.

In light of those excellent points, I can sort of see why the focus lately has been on OHL executives. It's a league that is forced to play and try to succeed with a definite ceiling; successful teams know how to a) ID the best components b) develop and deploy them c) move them for future assets at peak value.

In the NHL there isn't another league for players to ascend to (more like put out to pasture, sadly), but there is a salary cap ceiling and a point of diminishing returns with every player. I can see the Leafs aiming to become a development factory of players and coaches, investing lots of development time into them to eke out the most value when they move on for picks/prospects. There will be no more falling in love with players and giving them mega contracts unless it's Stamkos+ talent.

 

[LittleHockeyFan]

]

 

[Frank E]

Babcock is here to build a Cup contender that will be knocking on the door until it opens, not just a playoff team

You know, I was thinking about Babcock saying this. I dismissed it initially as sort of being your standard press conference "I want to win a Stanley Cup" stuff but the more I think about it the more I think it reflects another bad assumption made about Babcock during the process.

One of the things I think is going to be very interesting over the next few years is that we're really going to start seeing the ways that the cap can handcuff a good team. We've seen it to some extent before in minor ways, how Chicago has had to reboot a little over the years and how Pittsburgh has been sort of handcuffed in adding to their roster, but we're going to start seeing it in big ways soon. Chicago is going to lose significant pieces this off-season and even they aren't really going to be feeling it because they still have significant pieces signed at below market cap hits because of the old CBA rules.

So the idea that Babcock would see a team that was already built and maybe just in need of a few tweaks or his special brand of magic as a better bet for another cup may have rested on this flawed notion that we're going to see teams be and stay good for 6 or 7 years at a time. If a team is already a contender, or close to one, they've probably already got significant flaws that they can't spend money on or will develop them shortly.

The best way to win another cup may very well be to get in on the ground floor of a process and be on the entire ride. Those first few years where the team is getting major contributions from elite talent but not paying them much are going to be critical.

In light of those excellent points, I can sort of see why the focus lately has been on OHL executives. It's a league that is forced to play and try to succeed with a definite ceiling; successful teams know how to a) ID the best components b) develop and deploy them c) move them for future assets at peak value.

In the NHL there isn't another league for players to ascend to (more like put out to pasture, sadly), but there is a salary cap ceiling and a point of diminishing returns with every player. I can see the Leafs aiming to become a development factory of players and coaches, investing lots of development time into them to eke out the most value when they move on for picks/prospects. There will be no more falling in love with players and giving them mega contracts unless it's Stamkos+ talent.

This is where I'm coming from as well...there is probably going to be some trading away of youngish and strong'ish talent for younger prospects that is going to be hard for fans to swallow at first, but hopefully the funnel stays fuller of more cost effective talent. 

I think Gardiner, Kadri, and on the higher side, Bernier, fall into this "trade it in" category at this point for the Leafs.

 

[Kin]

You are posting in written word without inflection, and I don't know you from a hole in the ground.  Use an emoticon.  Just one please.  You don't need to overdo it, I'll pick it up from one.

Sorry, but my religion bans the use of emoticons.

See? It can be done.

I agree, not amount of coaching is going to increase the chances of the bad team winning over the good team.

That's not what I said. In fact, I disagree with this statement. But I'll explain why below.

My issue with you saying that a coach has very little to no impact is that you don't have proof to back that up

My issue with me saying that is that I didn't say that and, despite the fact that I've stated now multiple times that a coach DOES NOT have no impact, it's pretty clear that your repeated suggestion that I have said or implied that is just a straw man that you're propping up to argue...a point that hasn't been made.

To take it back to my original analogy, there's a difference between a good sales staff and a bad one. Sales people aren't irrelevant to a company. Look at my original post again before you write another thousand words at me. HIRING MIKE BABCOCK IS A GOOD THING. That statement, which I make emphatically in it, cannot be reconciled with the idea that a coach has no impact.

It's just a marginal difference from one coach to another. Not a non-existent one.

If Babcock had been in St. Louis, would the have made it to the second round?  Would they have one the cup?  Would they have missed the playoffs?  Your position seems to be that the exact same thing would have occured.

No, again, because the idea that it makes no difference is not something I've said but entirely a creation of yours.

If Mike Babcock was in St. Louis the Blues would probably be playing differently. Over the course of a season Mike Babcock probably could have been the difference between the few points needed for the Blues to have a different, and more advantageous, first round match-up.

In the playoffs, if the Babcock led Blues had played the Wild regardless, then I think how the series might have played out differently is fundamentally unknowable. Coaches being good in relation to each other isn't quantifiable to the extent that you could ever really say one way or another as to if it would have a positive effect. As a result, I don't try and guess.

It's not what you are saying, it's how you are saying it.

Yes, but you might be focused on that because it seems like you're entirely ignoring what I'm actually saying.