Unrepentant Babcock outlines vision for Oilers
EDMONTON — All the wins. All the playoff series. The two Stanley Cup Finals.
What has it all got the Edmonton Oilers?
Their roster is "poorly constructed," the voice in Montreal tells us. They can’t bring home a title in the Connor McDavid era, laughs the "expert" in Calgary. Their GM can’t get the right goalie, scoffs the Pittsburgh scribe.
You play the most playoff games of any NHL team over the past five seasons, win the second most games in the West (behind Colorado) over the past seven seasons, and here’s your reward:
The "experts" in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver — those bastions of winning hockey — are telling you how to win.
No wonder the Oilers, led by rebel owner Daryl Katz, don’t give a rip what anyone thinks about them hiring Mike Babcock, who rides in from Saskatchewan with a grain elevator’s worth of bad ink for being a bully and, as Johan Franzen so famously described, "The worst person I’ve ever met."
"The truth is hard," said Babcock on Tuesday, an unrepentant man who volleyed back question after question about his very character. "No matter what happens when you coach, when you scratch people, when you sit them out, when they're at the end of their career and you don't play them, it's hard for them, for sure.
"You try to do that as respectfully as you can. Why? Because........
