PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
Saskatoon native Mike Babcock guided Detroit to a Stanley Cup victory ===================================================

Saskatoon's Babcock makes good

"I'm living proof that dreams do come true," says head coach of Stanley Cup champs

By Cory Wolfe
TheStarPhoenix.com
June 4, 2008

SASKATOON, Sask. -- When Mike Babcock raised the Stanley Cup Wednesday night in Pittsburgh, he fulfilled a dream that took root in Saskatoon.

"If you don't dream, you cap your potential," the Detroit Red Wings' head coach told The StarPhoenix. "I've always been a big dreamer. For a kid from Saskatoon to get to do what I get to do, I'm living proof that dreams do come true."

Although he hasn't wintered here for more than 25 years, Babcock has returned to Saskatoon every summer since 1983. He and wife Maureen now make an annual pilgrimage to Emma Lake with their three children, Alexandra, Michael and Taylor.

"We want them to be around authentic and real people," said Babcock, "and that's what Saskatchewan is."

***

Babcock, 45, became the first Saskatchewan-raised head coach to win a Stanley Cup with the Wings' 3-2 win over the Penguins. His staff includes former Saskatoon Blade Todd McLellan of Melville. Babcock won't say he knew coaching was his destiny, but others had an inkling.

Tom Meldrum coached Babcock for four seasons - first in bantam hockey and later with the midget AAA Contacts.

"You had to make very sure, when you were doing a new drill," said Meldrum, "that you were able to explain it to him because if he didn't understand it, he'd be at your door after practice, wanting to know what you were trying to prove.

"He wanted to know right down to the last detail why we were doing that. He was trying to learn something."

Meldrum coached minor hockey in Saskatoon for 18 years. His pupils included future NHLers Brian Skrudland and Trent Yawney. Known as a tough, but fair, mentor, Meldrum met his match in the precocious, young Babcock.

"The way he talks on television now, he talked that way as a kid," said Meldrum. "He was a leader."

***

The Babcock household never had TV until the family moved to Saskatoon in 1975. Mike was 12, the second of four children born to Mike Sr. and Gail.

Before settling here, the family followed Mike Sr.'s mining jobs through various hinterlands - from northern Ontario to the Northwest Territories to northern Manitoba. Babcock's hockey career had a primitive start in Tungsten, N.W.T.

"We didn't have a (hockey) rink up in Tungsten, but we had an indoor, two-sheet curling strip," said Mike Sr. "In March, we'd flood it smooth and give it to the kids. The kids at that little townsite skated there for 2 1/2 months every year."

Babcock first played organized hockey in Leaf Rapids, Man. When the Babcocks moved to Saskatoon, young Mike made himself at home on the outdoor rink at St. James School. Hockey wasn't his only obsession, though. When he moved on to Holy Cross High School, he starred in track, co-captained the senior volleyball team and served on Student Representative Council.

In every pursuit, he was competitive and outspoken - qualities he continues to exhibit.

"My parents raised children that were supposed to make decisions on their own," said Babcock, who has an older sister and younger twin sisters. "They believed that intelligent people questioned, and they didn't believe in peer pressure. They thought that you should sway your friends into doing the right thing all the time."

Rob Rongve grew up three blocks from the Babcocks in southeast Saskatoon. Now an investment planner in North Battleford, he maintains a close friendship with Babcock.

"He was always very self-confident," said Rongve, who attended Game 5 Monday at Joe Louis Arena. "He was highly respected and liked by everyone."

Well, almost everyone. Babcock and Rongve made some enemies in Grade 8 when they showed up to court their girlfriends at a rival school.

"We'd ride our bikes there," Rongve said of the 16-block trek from St. James School to Georges Vanier School. "The boys from that school were not happy that we were coming around their turf."

***

Babcock bit off a bigger battle in 1981 when he was a budding defenceman with the Saskatoon Blades.

"I had to call off a practice to save his life," recalled former Blades coach Daryl Lubiniecki. "He'd had a fight with (future NHL enforcer) Dave Brown in practice and he actually cut Dave Brown. You know what Dave is like; the next time they were on the ice together, Dave went right at him. Both benches cleared - not for a bench-clearing brawl, but they came out to watch the fight."

Brown stood four inches taller than the 6-foot-1 Babcock, and Lubiniecki quickly interrupted the mismatch.

"I don't know if he's ever thanked me for saving his life," Lubiniecki said wryly.

After his brief tour with the Blades, Babcock red-shirted one season at the University of Saskatchewan where he met Dave King, one of his great coaching mentors. Babcock would cut his own coaching teeth two years later while playing hockey at McGill University in Montreal.

"I coached the professors' hockey team; that's how they gave me a partial scholarship," said Babcock.

After graduating with a physical education degree in 1987, the 24-year-old defenceman moved to England to become player-coach of the British Hockey League's Whitley Warriors. Babcock did an exemplary impersonation of his boyhood idol, Bobby Orr, and piled up 132 points in 36 regular-season games.

***

Following a successful run as head coach of the Red Deer College Kings, Babcock became bench boss of the WHL's Moose Jaw Warriors in 1991, when he was just 28.

Babcock inherited a team burdened by boardroom politics and a politically incorrect logo. The young coach succeeded in classing up the Warriors' emblem - ditching the image of a tomahawk-wielding Indian riding a skate blade, and adopting a more respectable Native headdress - but on-ice success proved more elusive.

The board of the community-owned team fired Babcock in the summer of 1993 when the two sides disagreed on a suitable length for a contract extension.

"It was tough to be the coach and our team wasn't good," said Babcock, "but it was a great battle to go through and it helped me become a better coach."

His successor, Al Tuer, was Moose Jaw's eighth head coach in a decade.

"It was like (the Warriors) were changing their underwear every spring or fall," said Lubiniecki, who lured Lorne Molleken - a one-time co-coach with Moose Jaw - to Saskatoon in 1991.

Given his thin résumé, Babcock faced long odds in his quest to get back on the coaching carousel. As always, though, he was a man with a plan. When one of Babcock's university teammates, Dave Adolph, left the University of Lethbridge to become head coach at the University of Saskatchewan, Babcock landed on the Lethbridge bench.

"He took a nine-month position at U of L," said Adolph. "He was a man with a purpose. He figured if he could spin that program around, he could get back into the Western Hockey League."

Babcock could not have scripted his comeback better. He guided the Lethbridge Pronghorns to the Canadian university title in 1994, and used that success to land a job with the WHL's Spokane Chiefs.

"What I liked about Mike was he had good presence and he was a real confident guy even after being fired from Moose Jaw," said Tim Speltz, the Chiefs' general manager since 1990.

Babcock would ultimately turn the Chiefs into a perennial contender (they were WHL finalists twice in six seasons) but he and his team got off to an awful start. They won only a handful of games before Christmas in 1994. Speltz and Chiefs owner Bobby Brett called a dinner meeting with Babcock. Convinced that he was about to be fired, Babcock confided in his assistant, Parry Shockey.

"Tim wouldn't do that," Shockey replied to Babcock. "No. 1, he's not gonna spend money to buy you dinner if he's going to fire you; and No. 2, that's not the way he operates."

Indeed, Speltz maintained his belief in Babcock and in spite of the Chiefs' terrible start, they finished close to .500 (32-36-4) and qualified for playoffs. The following season, Spokane won 50 games - a franchise record that was equalled only this season when the Chiefs won the Memorial Cup under coach Bill Peters.

"Lots of times in my coaching career, I could have just as easily been on the way out as had success," said Babcock. "Maybe part of that was the stick-to-itiveness I learned in Moose Jaw."

***

>From Moose Jaw to Detroit, Mike Sr. has watched his son's journey with
>pride.

"I've lost buttons a few times," said the 71-year-old, who still lives in Saskatoon.

Few of hockey's major championships have eluded Babcock. In addition to collegiate titles and the Stanley Cup, he's the only coach to guide Canada to world championships at both the junior (1997) and senior (2004) levels.

The author of that resume is quick to put it in perspective, though.

"The measure of me, in my lifetime," said Babcock, "isn't going to be how many games or Stanley Cups I win. It's going to be the family I raise and the amount of integrity I (have) in my life.

"Those," he concluded, "are Saskatchewan things."

cwolfe@sp.canwest.com

© The StarPhoenix 2008

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Babcock third coach to win University & Stanley Cups
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June 5, 2008

OTTAWA (CIS) – Mike Babcock became the third coach in history to win both the University Cup and Stanley Cup when his Detroit Red Wings defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 in Game 6 of the NHL final, Wednesday night.

Babcock joined Jean Perron and Mike Keenan as bench bosses who have captured both the Canadian Interuniversity Sport men’s hockey banner and the NHL title.

Babcock guided the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns to the University Cup championship in 1993-94 with a 5-2 win over the Guelph Gryphons at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

During his playing days, Babcock was a two-time all-star rearguard at McGill from 1983-84 to 1986-87, where he also served as captain and was named team MVP.

Perron won the University Cup as head coach of the Université de Moncton Aigles Bleus in 1980-81 and 1981-82, defeating former NHL and Canadian national team coach Dave King and the Saskatchewan Huskies 4-2 at Calgary and 3-2 at Moncton, respectively.

Perron would then go on to win the Stanley Cup in his first season as an NHL head coach with the Montreal Canadiens in 1985-86.

Keenan claimed the CIS championship with the University of Toronto Varsity Blues in 1983-84, skating past the Concordia Stingers 9-1 at Trois-Rivières, Que. The previous year, he had guided the Rochester Americans to the AHL’s Calder Cup.

Following his back-to-back titles, Keenan joined the NHL coaching ranks with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1984-85 and won the Stanley Cup in 1993-94 with the New York Rangers.

SOURCE:
Steve Knowles, Canada West hockey statistician, & Earl Zukerman, McGill sports information officer.


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Babcock savours the Cup
=========================================

By Bob Duff
Canwest News Service
(reprinted from The Windsor Star)
June 6, 2008

DETROIT - The morning of June 8, 1997, the day after the Detroit Red Wings had won the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1955, Wings coach Scotty Bowman and a special companion crossed the border to visit a friend in Windsor.

Bowman put Lord Stanley's mug in the car and brought to Jimmy Skinner's south Windsor home.

Skinner, who died last summer, had coached the 1954-55 Wings to that title. Ever a student of the history of the game, Bowman felt it only proper that he share the moment with the last man who'd made it possible.

"Jimmy, he was a good friend and a good guy to talk with, because he'd been here so long," Bowman said. "He was a lot of fun."

All through the Cup final series, an oversized photo of Skinner about to plant a kiss on the bowl of the fabled mug hung next to the hallway leading to the Red Wings dressing room at Joe Louis Arena.

Wednesday, another Wings coach got his first chance to mug with Stanley.

This was Mike Babcock's magical moment. And there to savour it with him was Bowman.

His predecessor. His confidant. His friend.

"It's a great feeling as a coach when you finally get there," said Bowman, who coached a record nine Cup final-winning teams, but went 0-12 in his first three Cup final series.

"The first Cup gives you a sense of relief, because you always wonder if you're going to win it.

"It's something you dream of, but at the same time, there's some great coaches that never win it."

Babcock was starting to wonder if he might be one of those fellows.

CHAMPIONSHIP ROOTS

He won a CIS title with the Lethbridge Pronghorns and led Canada to a world junior title, but Babcock lost a seven-game final series to New Jersey as Anaheim's bench boss in 2003.

When the Wings squandered their first chance to clinch the Cup with 34.1 seconds to play in Game 5, a guy who'd never won one was left to wonder whether the hockey gods were toying with him.

"Until you've won at the level you're at, they'll always be saying, 'Maybe he can't win the big one,'" Babcock said. "Once you've won the big one, you can and you just keep doing it. Scotty and I talked about this."

Bowman and Babcock discuss many things.

"I talk to Scotty lots," Babcock said. "We talk about his kids, we talk about what the weather's like in Florida (where Bowman winters), we talk about hockey, we talk about lots of stuff.

"He's good to have as a friend."

Bowman, considered the best bench manager in hockey history, lauds Babcock for his diligent approach to the game.

"He's very thorough," Bowman said. "He uses his staff well.

"I just think he touches all the bases all the time."

The mutual respect and the closeness that's developed between the two since Babcock was hired in 2005 extends far beyond their wealth of hockey knowledge.

When Bowman's son Stanley was diagnosed with bone-marrow cancer, Babcock, who helped establish a cancer foundation after a neighbour's son lost his life to the disease, stepped in to provide Bowman with knowledge and reassurance.

"When my son Stanley got sick about 16-17 months ago, we needed some other opinions and we were able to get a good friend of Mike's to help out and get second opinions," Bowman said.

"He's been very helpful.

"He's a very humble and charitable guy."

As of Wednesday, like Bowman, he's also part of a very select brotherhood.

Babcock is a Stanley Cup champion.

bduff@thestar.canwest.com
© The Windsor Star 2008


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Red Wings' Babcock completes Cup mission
====================================

By Ansar Khan
www.mlive.com

PITTSBURGH -- Five years ago, Mike Babcock watched a Stanley Cup celebration in person. Wednesday night, he participated in one.

The Detroit Red Wings hired Babcock as coach three years ago to get the most out of their talented players. He made them a harder team to play against. He challenged veterans to be their best and he aided in the development of younger players.

And now he will have his name etched on the Stanley Cup.

"To be able to share this journey with the guys and to be able to share it with the city of Detroit, and obviously my family, that's very emotional,'' Babcock said after Wednesday's series-clinching 3-2 victory over Pittsburgh.

"And I'm sure I'm going to have some emotional moments in the next week just thinking about it. But to have your name on the Stanley Cup, pretty special.''

Babcock's personnel moves paid off in the playoffs, none more so than his decision to replace a shaky Dominik Hasek in goal with Chris Osgood after Game 4 of the opening round against Nashville. That's also the time he inserted into the lineup rookie Darren Helm, who brought a lot of energy with his speed and aggressive forechecking.

And in the finals, Babcock opted to keep 46-year-old Chris Chelios out of the lineup in favor of Andreas Lilja.

"I've coached good players in a lot of situations and had a lot of success, but I never had a group like this,'' Babcock said. "Nick Lidstrom is as good a leader as you can ever have in any sport, his presence, his ability and how calm he is and how driven he is. And then the support cast with (Kris) Draper and Chelios and (Pavel) Datsyuk and (Henrik) Zetterberg, guys like Dally Drake, we have such a great team. I'm so proud of the guys, proud to be the coach of the Detroit Red Wings. We got great ownership and Kenny Holland and his staff do a great job.''

Holland hired Babcock in July 2005, looking for a hard-driving, abrasive personality to get the most out of a club that had suffered two early playoff exits under Dave Lewis, the former longtime assistant who was regarded as more of a players coach because of a closer relationship with many of the veterans.

"It's his team,'' Holland said. "When we came out of the work stoppage, I felt it was time to get somebody outside the organization. We had a great run under Scotty (Bowman), had a great two years under Dave Lewis, but it was time to bring in someone fresh.

"From the first day of training camp in '05-06, he's talked about our team driving to the net, playing harder on the wall, going to all the dirty areas,'' Holland added. "He's challenged our team at times where he didn't think we responded. Winning tonight was a three-year run and Mike's had a major, major part in why we won the Stanley Cup. He's molded the team into his team.''

The Red Wings continued playing their successful puck-possession style with an added element of grit under Babcock. He is the first coach to win 50 or more games in his first three seasons with a team and just the second to accomplish the feat at any point, joining Bowman, who won 50 or more in four consecutive seasons with Montreal, from 1975-76 to 1978-79.

Babcock is a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as the league's coach of the year. He and Holland are close to finalizing a three-year contract extension. Only a few minor financial details remain.

In his first NHL season with Anaheim, Babcock guided the Ducks to Game 7 of the finals, where they lost to New Jersey. He forced himself to watch the on-ice celebration afterward. On Wednesday, surrounded by his family, the feeling was much different.

"I don't even know if it's set in yet,'' Babcock said. "You work hard and you believe if you do good things, good things will happen. I knew we'd get our turn, we're too good a team, too determined.''