Three former NHL'ers who played for Babcock, told me that Babcock is a very difficult and unpleasant coach to play for and that that opinion is shared by most players except for superstars. Hearsay; neither here nor there. You don't have to be liked by all to be a good coach. But you have to be liked by more than a few players on your team in order to get buy in, I believe. Especially in today's NHL, where kids make multi-millions with NMC/NTC and have little to no respect for a coach. Most players adore Trotz from what I hear, an it shows in his results. Even Darryl Sutter, who is a hard a$$, is liked and respected by players in the first 3-4 years of being a coach (then it wears out, I suppose, but that's a fate of coaches, in general).
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"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think." Georg Hegel
“To generalize is to be an idiot.” William Blake
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