Marner speaks out on reports that Babcock forced him to tears during his rookie season

The Leafs’ superstar confirms the rumour and speaks candidly about his relationship with his former coach.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Marner speaks out on reports that Babcock forced him to tears during his rookie season
TSN

In case you missed the story earlier today, multiple Toronto Maple Leafs reporters shared a story about former Leafs head coach Mike Babcock and a tactic that he employed with then rookie Mitch Marner during the team's 2016-17 season. Ian Tulloch of The Athletic initially broke the story that essentially goes like this:

To set the stage the Maple Leafs were on a father son road trip when Mike Babcock confronted a then rookie Mitch Marner about what he perceived to be the young player's laziness on and off the ice. In an effort to drive his point home Mike Babcock asked Marner to create a list of all the players on the Maple Leafs roster and then asked him to rank them based on their respective effort level in that particular season. Marner obliged when his coach demanded this of him and according to multiple sources the player put his name in the very last spot on the list as if to acknowledge that he could work much harder. It was a show of maturity on the part of Marner but what the young Maple Leaf did not know at the time was that Babcock had planned to use that list against some of his other players. 
Babcock then reportedly took the list and is believed to have shown it to two players in particular, Toronto Maple Leafs veterans Tyler Bozak and Toronto Maple Leafs veteran Nazem Kadri. When you consider that both players are centers and could very well be the men driving the line that Marner would be on at different points in the season, this put the young rookie in a truly terrible position. Unsurprisingly this left Marner devastated and to hear Tulloch describe is nothing short of heartbreaking.


From Tulloch:

According to multiple sources, Marner was in tears after the details of his list were shared, while his teammates were furious — specifically with Babcock. They couldn’t believe their head coach would put a 19-year-old in that situation, especially considering how well-liked Marner was in the dressing room.


Tulloch has since reached out to his sources around the league to confirm this story, only to learn that an almost identical situation took place with Babcock while he was the head coach of the Detroit Red Wings. Babcock reportedly did the same thing to an unidentified member of the Red Wings roster, again a very young player, and again shared the answers that player gave him with the rest of his teammates. This stuff sounds like some kind of twisted psychological experiment gone bad.


Yikes... that's no way to gain your team's trust. Babcock, however, has offered up a defense of his actions courtesy of NHL insider Elliotte Friedman, check it out:


Now Marner himself is speaking out about "the list" and... well... we'll let Mitchy tell you himself:



Source: TSN