Mike Babcock compliments 2 of his players on their “big asses.”

Alright I have to admit when I first heard this it caught me a little by surprise, only for a brief second though before I could no longer contain my laughter.

Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock has always been a man who speaks his mind, the veteran head coach knows he is one of the most respected figures in the entire National Hockey League and is often more open because of that than coaches in other organizations. On Monday we got a perfect example of this when Babcock gave a truly eyebrow raising answer to what would have otherwise appeared to be a rather innocuous question from a reporter. Babcock was asked what it was that allowed smaller players like Dmytro Timashov and Trevor Moore to thrive at the NHL level in spite of their smaller stature and his answer left the members of the assemble media either laughing or a little stunned.

"They got big assess," said Babcock on Monday. "So they weigh a lot. You can laugh, but it's the truth. You can get under people, you can win retrieval races, you can own lanes. You have good balance."

That's right, according to the Toronto Maple Leafs bench boss the secret to the success of Timashov and Moore lies in their butts. Now it may sound absurd on the surface but the rest of Babcock's comment does make a great deal of sense. A low center of gravity would make it easy for you to leverage your weight against a bigger opponent, and could even help you up-end another player who's center of gravity might be considerably higher off of the playing surface. 

It's quite the comment to make about your own players though and I highly suspect that both Timashov and Moore will get a good chuckle out of it when they hear the comments their coach made in the media this morning. I must admit what I am really looking forward to is having one of the reporters that was on hand this morning ask one, or both, of the players in question about that very subject. 

It seems though that Mike Babcock is a fan of big butts.