The greatest hockey coach in the game has left Detroit. This flew under the radar almost everywhere outside of Detroit, Toronto, and Buffalo because hockey is probably less popular than golf right now. Mike Babcock, formerly with the Detroit Red Wings, signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs (shouldn't it be Maple Leaves? Just saying...) for 8 years, $50M ($6.25M/yr). That's a pretty massive deal, making Babcock deservedly the highest paid coach in the NHL.
The Wings extended a nice offer, not quite as high as Toronto's, but close. The general feeling leading up to Babcock's decision was that both the Wings and Babcock were ready to move on. Toronto, with Shanahan in the GM's chair and also being in Canada (I believe Babcock was at least slightly biased towards coaching a team based in Canada) was the frontrunner before negotiations even began. The extra money Babcock was getting to go to Toronto definitely edged the puck towards the Leafs, but I think he was probably going there anyway.
Normally a coveted coach leaving while still in his prime to coach your rival would generate more animosity, but a) this is hockey, where almost everyone is weirdly nice, and b) the Red Wings have a capable successor in-house with Jeff Blashill, who currently is coaching the Wings' minor league club in Grand Rapids. Ken Holland has been holding onto Blashill tightly for the past year, knowing that Babcock was potentially pulling stakes for Canada. Last year Holland offered Blashill double his salary if Blashill would not talk to any of the 5 NHL teams who had expressed interest in him (Blashill eagerly accepted Holland's offer). I'd say it's a safe bet that Blashill is your next coach.
The Red Wings are a team that prefers to promote from within. You can forget about Dan Bylsma or any of the other coaches with NHL experience, Blashill is the guy and he knows what he's doing. As far as playing cred goes, Blashill was a goalie at Ferris State before moving on to coaching. He bounced around the CCHA as an assistant for a few years before he got his first HC job in 2008 for a junior hockey club. Then in 2010 he got a HC job with Western Michigan. After 1 year with WMU (which went REALLY well), Mike Babcock had seen enough and brought him on as an assistant coach. After one year of that, Blashill took on the HC job with the Griffins, Detroit's minor league team. His first year with the team, they won the Calder Cup (the championship of minor league hockey). Last year they lost in the semis, and this year they are in the semi-finals again. All this despite regularly losing his star players to the Big League Club.
Should Blashill get promoted to the Big League Club himself, as most people expect, it would represent a rather swift start to his career. Babcock himself had to wait through 12 years of coaching junior and minor league hockey before getting his first NHL head coaching gig. But make no mistake, Blashill has earned it. He knows the players, having coached several of them already as they passed through Grand Rapids, and he's clearly got the chops with 3 straight 40-win seasons under his belt.
The biggest gripe fans had of Babcock was the supposition that his gruff demeanor and old-school style led to some of the big name free agents signing with other teams. I don't know if that's true or not, but if it was, then Blashill would represent a change in those respects. This NHL offseason will be very interesting.
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