Mike babcock blue jackets player phones

Hockey doesn’t even need to start to be stupid, especially when it comes to a needlessly recycled coach like Mike Babcock. If you don’t recall Babcock since he got fired from the Leafs, you may remember him from such episodes as making Johan Franzen’s life an utter hell or tricking Mitch Marner into throwing all of his teammates under the bus among other accusations of mistreatment and being a cretin.

Training camp hasn’t even begun in Columbus, where Babcock was somehow able to convince the Blue Jackets front office that he was rehabilitated and a new man, and yet Babs appears to be back on his idiocy:

While loath to give Spittin’ Chiclets any more air than they deserve, i.e. any, there’s no question they are plugged into the NHL player ecosystem. Players love them, as they’re all the same meatheads. So when Paul Bissonnette says a player texted him this, you can be pretty sure a player did.

No one should ever want to see what an NHL player has on his phone. They’re young, dumb millionaires, and you know where that goes. More to the point, what’s on their phone is THEIR business, not Babcock’s. What is it the coach thinks he’s going to find there that’s going to tell him anything he can’t figure out already? Any answer to the questions generated by hearing about this would be gross and jarring and there’s isn’t a good one among them. Even if Babcock just wanted to know how filters worked.

If you’d like to know how a creep like Babcock can get back behind an NHL bench even after it’s been clearly illustrated he’s a damaging presence, not only do you only have to see the one Stanley Cup he won with Detroit, but hockey media is always in a rush to do stuff like this:

How digging through your players’ phones aids their mental health would be an interesting discussion, but at least we know where the players can clearly point out he’s crossed the line.

This is probably as relevant as the Jackets will be all season, and it’s a mark on how the thinking of the organization has gone for their entire existence that they wanted to turn over the development of their team’s most important player since Rick Nash, Adam Fantilli, to a coach like Babcock who clearly has had the game and times pass him by. This is how a team goes nowhere in their entire history, which is precisely where this Jackets team is headed too. Whether Babcock ever makes it to the regular season or not.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate and on Bluesky @Felsgate.bsky.social