Babs is under fire

Mike Babcock was paid more money than any coach in hockey history to take over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

And now his greatest challenge – finding a way to fix a winning roster and a struggling team.

A team that for almost a month now has too often lacked energy and urgency. A fast team that hasn’t looked or played fast of late. That was apparent Friday night in Florida. How much of that is playing and how much of that is coaching and how much of that is circumstantial will be unveiled in the coming months.

The Leafs have added John Tavares, Andreas Johnsson, a productive and confident Kasperi Kapanen and improved play from Mitch Marner and Morgan Rielly to this year’s team – and yet the team isn’t a whole lot better than the one a year ago.

Babcock loves to talk about how hard a league the NHL is and how every point is earned. That removes some of the heat from his players and maybe from his coaching staff. This is January. The Leafs have lost five of their past six home games, all to teams below them in the standings at the time of the venture.

 Babcock is supposed to be as good as it gets when it comes to coaching. It’s his time now to work some magic and demonstrate again why the Leafs invested in him so heavily.

 What did missing training camp and signing late do for Johnny Gaudreau in 2016-17? Johnny Hockey scored just two goals in his first 14 games with the Flames that year. He went on to have his only sub-par scoring season in the NHL. He followed it up with an 84-point season last year and on pace for 120 points this year. To paraphrase Harry Neale, the only player he’s ever seen who missed training camp and didn’t miss a beat: Guy named Mario Lemieux … Just what the NHL needs: More computers on the bench. The league has struck a deal to supply coaches with new gadget and 60 real time stats during the game. If you think the offside challenge is bad, just wait … There are computer people out there telling me that William Nylander is playing just fine. He isn’t. And that has nothing to do with the, gulp, $10 million the Leafs are paying him this season … Talk amongst yourselves: Is the Nylander contract the best or worst thing to happen to pending restricted free agents? You can argue either side of this one … Why I wanted a World Cup of Hockey? I want to see Connor McDavid playing centre for Canada. I want to see Auston Matthews opposite him on Team USA. I want to see the Russians with Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov and Evgeni Malkin. When will we see that again? …I have to figure that Brian Burke, the general manager, would get crazy mad at Brian Burke,  the television and radio commentator, for the things he says… Erik Karlsson is back doing the kind of things only he can do. In his first 20 games with the San Jose Sharks, Karlsson didn’t look himself, putting up just 10 points. In the past 27 points, he’s scored 33 points, which is as hot offensively as he’s ever been … A scout on the greatest asset Lou Lamoriello has brought to the shocking New York Islanders: “Calm. Remarkable calm.”