Mike Babcock has already made an impact on the Oilers during preseason
For many teams in the NHL, preseason hockey may feel like a meaningless, obligatory task that has to be completed before getting to the regular season. For teams looking to transform themselves, however, especially those with new head coaches, the preseason is an important time to establish new habits before playing games that actually count.
Take the Edmonton Oilers, for example. Their hiring of Mike Babcock as head coach in the offseason signalled an organizational desire to play a more disciplined and accountable style. So far, so good for the Oilers in the preseason, as they’ve won their first two games with Babcock already putting his stamp on the team.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton discussed the ways in which Babcock has shown his effect on the Oilers this preseason.
Tyler Yaremchuk: There have been a couple of things that have been really refreshing for me with Mike Babcock, and quite honestly sursprising. We saw in the Oilers’ first preseason game, Leon Draisaitl commits a turnover 15 seconds into the game, he got pulled off the Connor McDavid line for a little bit. That’s something that wasn’t happening under past head coaches. If we’re taking Connor and Leon at their word from the offseason, that is something Connor and Leon wanted. We’ve seen Babcock stop practices. We’ve seen Babcock stop practices because of something Connor or Leon did. They wanted to be coached, he’s very clearly coaching them.
The other one, and this is maybe more of a surprise for me, is how he’s talking about some of their young players. Ike Howard hasn’t had the best start to training camp, but with the injuries the Oilers have up front and their lack of depth on the wings especially in the top six, Ike Howard is probably going to be a guy who they’re relying on to play top six minutes in the regular season. I thought Babcock had a realy good quote on Howard kind of struggling early in the preseason. He said “When you’re used to playing in a different league and you have the puck all the time, then you get out there and you never touch the puck, for young guys it can be frustrating.” He called it a growing experience for Howard. I really like that quote from Babcock with the understanding that when Ike Howard was playing in college and even in the American League, he’s the best player on the ice. He can get the puck whenever he wants. You can’t do that in the NHL, even if you are one of the best players.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Wednesday’s episode here…
