Maple Leafs may have created a “roadblock” for Mike Babcock's future in the NHL.

A tough road ahead for the veteran head coach.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Maple Leafs may have created a “roadblock” for Mike Babcock's future in the NHL.
Chris Szagola/CSM/Zuma

Although the talk surrounding the potential firing of Toronto Maple Leafs' head coach Mike Babcock had bubbled to the surface more than 7 months ago, well before the start of the 2019 - 2020 National Hockey League regular season, many were still left shocked when the Maple Leafs organization allowed general manager Kyle Dubas to actually terminate the superstar head coach earlier this week.

Although there is no doubt that Mike Babcock's reputation as arguably the best head coach in the NHL has taken a serious blow due to his time as the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, he remains one of the most well respected bench bosses in the entire league even to this day. That when combined with the fact that his contract runs through the 2022 - 2023 NHL season had led many to believe that Babcock was all but untouchable, especially given that one of the players he coached in Brendan Shanahan currently works as the organizations top executive. That was not the case however and now that Babcock has been fired the question has already turned to what will come next for the highly respected head coach?

The answer may be a very complicated one according to Luke Fox of Sportsnet and that may be due in large part to the work of the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. In a recent article for Sportsnet Fox expressed serious doubts about whether or not Babcock would be able to find another job as an NHL head coach due in large part to the fact that he currently still has a truly massive contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs. From Fox:

Digging a little deeper, Babcock’s whopper of a contract — his record-setting $5.875 million annual salary is guaranteed through June 30, 2023 — stands as quite the roadblock.

The NHL’s priciest bench buyout is getting paid more to not coach than anyone in the NHL is getting paid to coach (Florida’s Joel Quenneville is the runner-up at $5.25 million).

We’re not quite into Roberto “My Contract Sucks” Luongo territory here, but escaping the outstanding debt owed to Babcock will be tricky business for MLSE.

According to one source that Fox spoke to any team looking to hire Babcock while he remains under contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs would have to pay him "a market-representative salary," due to how the National Hockey League's rules surrounding these situations go. The Leafs are currently on the hook for Babcock's full salary, however should another team sign him to a new deal they would only be forced to pay him the difference between his new salary and the salary he was promised by the Leafs. As a result the source expects that Babcock would fetch in excess of $4.5 million per season on his next deal, and there are simply not many teams in the NHL that would be willing to cough up that kind of cash right now. In fact the source stated that he has seen some teams unwilling to move a coach under contract unless the full salary is paid by the new organization, a possibility that could make finding a new home for Babcock all the more impossible. 

To be clear here Fox was not predicting that Babcock's career in the NHL will be over as a result of this, however he did point out that there are major hurdles for Babcock moving forward. Any team looking to acquire the now former Toronto Maple Leafs head coach is going to have to pay a small fortune to make it happen.

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