Franzen shouldn’t complain of abuse because of where Babcock got him

As you know by now, veteran Johan Franzen has joined the growing list of NHL players speaking out about head coach Mike Babcock.

“As a coach he is extremely accurate and prepared. He is great at putting together a gaming system and getting everyone to buy into it. That’s his strong side,” Franzen told Swedish newspaper Expressen. “But then he’s a terrible man, the worst person I’ve ever met. A bully who cheated on people, it could be cleaners in the Detroit arena or anyone. He jumped on people just because.”

Franzen answered to the story that first came out after Chris Chelios spoke of the abuse in an interview with the Spittin Chiclets podcast. Chelios said Babcock “blatantly verbally assaulted” Franzen during a playoff game, which led to Franzen suffering a “nervous breakdown.”

Chelios added that the leadership group of Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg talked about Babcock’s behaviour among themselves also spoke with then-general manager Ken Holland. But, Chelios said, Holland backed Babcock.

And he is not the only one. On Tuesday, Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun wrote a piece on the new allegations made on Babcock. While he agrees that the former Maple Leafs head coach needs to change his ways to return to a job in the NHL, he believes Franzen does not have the right to complain about the abuse. 

“What Franzen didn’t say was that on the two Stanley Cup runs early in his career, one win by the Red Wings, one a seven-game defeat in the final, Franzen scored 25 goals in 39 playoff games — absolute superstar playoff totals for a player who was never close to a superstar.

That was more goals than Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin scored in those back-to-back Pittsburgh-Detroit playoff years.

You remember the worst. You don’t always remember the best. But somehow both are important.”

Is that supposed to make out for all the crap he put on Franzen? 

Simmons adds that despite reports that Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk were more than pleased with Babcock’s departure from the Red Wings, he still maintains that the latter convinced free agent Ilya Mikheyev to join Toronto because of Babcock. 

So Simmons believes he is not THAT bad. What’s your take?