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December 20, 2005 - Gray Wade

Here’s the plan:

Become coach of the Detroit Red Wings, one of the National Hockey League’s storied Original Six teams, and guide the team to a Stanley Cup victory.

Repeat annually as necessary.

That’s what new Red Wings coach Mike Babcock’s been working towards during his hockey career, and his passion to the sport indicates he’s a good fit for the head coaching position.

He’s called coaching the Red Wings his dream job.

“The big thing for me is you have an opportunity here,” he said. “You want a chance to be successful, and in an atmosphere that they love hockey.”

It’s Hockeytown, not Disneyland...

“They love hockey,” he says. “It’s the No. 1 thing.”

His former neighbor, Timothy Hayden, said Babcock isn’t daunted from going from a lesser-known hockey market like Anaheim for Detroit.

“This guy lives for this. He’s not afraid to go to Hockeytown.” he said. “He didn’t stumble into this job. He’s been working for it.”

In a way, he’s been grooming himself for it since he first started coaching over 15 years ago.

“I told people a long time ago I was going to coach the Red Wings. What does that mean?” he says. “A lot of people have dreams and stuff like that. I’m real fortunate. We have a good chance.”

A key to Babcock’s success is his unwillingness to stay stagnant. He believes in lifelong learning and continually working to improve.

“You’re always adjusting,” he explains. “The players are adjusting, too. There are new players. They have a lot of ideas and they play a certain way.”

A good coach comes in and creates a formula that allows them to be successful.

“That’s what you try to do,” Babcock says. “And we try to create structure on our team because we think structure protects the individual but we sure don’t want to handcuff them. We want them to be good.”

He’s got the players on the same page with his preparation, planning and hard work. Throughout his coaching career, those principles have led to team success.

Babcock broke into coaching with Red Deer College, where he won the Alberta College Championships and a coach of the year award in 1989. After a stint with Moose Jaw of the Western Hockey League, he coached Canadian college hockey at Lethbridge, where he took his team to a national championship in 1993-93, earning him coach of the year honors.

When Babcock coached Spokane in the WHL, he was named the league’s coach of the year for two of his six seasons.

He moved to the American Hockey League, where he took the Anaheim-Detroit minor league team Cincinnati to a Calder Cup finals appearance after a franchise-best 95 points in 2000-01.

He’s has success internationally, too. Babcock led Canada to two gold medals: in 1997 in the World Junior Championships and 2004’s World Championship, on a team with Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby.

And no Red Wing fan can forget what Babcock did while with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. Even if fans don’t recognize that Babcock led the team to its best regular season in club history and made the team the most improved in the league, they certainly know that he steered the Ducks to the Stanley Cup Finals through Detroit, sweeping the Wings in the first round of the playoffs in 2002-03.

Hayden met Babcock in Cincinnati, where he coached the farm team for Detroit and Anaheim. Early on, he saw Babcock had a plan.

He told us, `I’m only here for a short time.’ You could tell he had a goal,” Hayden noted.

Throughout his learning process, Babcock prepares himself for the next step.

“He was all about making himself better,” Hayden said. “It was all about looking at the next level.”

If the AHL Ducks were off when the Red Wings played the Blue Jackets, Babcock would drive to Columbus, said Hayden, who’d accompany Babcock on some trips and watch him network.

“It wasn’t, `let’s screw around and watch the game,’” he remembered. “It was all business. He was taking notes, meeting players, talking to coaches.”

For Babcock, coaching is coaching. You strive to learn as much as you can, but the game is the same and he approaches it with the same desire to win at any level.

“I think you’re always learning, but I don’t believe the passion to win is different at any level,” he said. “I don’t want to win any worse now than when I coached at college.”

Jason Williams played for Babcock in Cincinnati, and he doesn’t think Babcock coaches any differently now than he did then.

“Things haven’t changed too much,” he said. “He’s got a certain system that he likes to play and he basically tells the guys, `This is how we’re going to play.’”

More so than in recent years, Babcock has gotten the Red Wings to pull together as a team.

“If everybody is on the same page and thinking the same way, it makes it easier for us to play. We know where guys are going to be, what’s expected, and where the puck is going to end up,” Williams said. “I find he does a really good job of doing that.”

Babcock came in as a replacement for Dave Lewis, who many thought had been in the top spot too long to be able to motivate the experienced team to its fullest.

"He has tremendous passion for the game. He has tremendous energy," General Manager Ken Holland said. "He's got specific ideas in mind on how he wants to the team to play, how he wants the players to play. He's the boss.”

A glance at Babcock’s eyes, face and posture behind the bench makes that abundantly clear.

"When you don't make people accountable, it leads to a superstar mentality where not everyone on the team is important," Babcock said.

He challenged players at the most intense training camp they’ve had in recent years. They’ve responded early, posting a franchise-tying 9-game win streak in a quick start.

“He’s still the hard-nosed guy who expects a lot from his players and he wants each and every guy to compete every night and bring it every night,” Williams said. “If you start to slack off a little bit, he’s going to be right on you, letting you know how he feels.”

Babcock brought Paul MacLean and Todd McClellan as assistant coaches to complement him, not compliment him.

“I think that’s the key when you’re coaching. You have to surround yourself with the best staff you can,” he said. “I try to empower the guys and we have continual challenge every day.”

MacLean, a former Red Wing, worked with Babcock in Anaheim.

“I thought he had a real good keel for players and the game,” Babcock said. “He brought something I didn’t.”

McClellan coached Houston of the AHL to a Calder Cup.

“I’d known him in the past and I thought he was a great coach,” Babcock said. “I was looking for a different opinion. I was looking when doors are shut, a little bit of debate.”

In August, Babcock and his assistants would be at work by 7 a.m.

“I've never seen a coach work as hard as he does preparing himself and his coaching staff, preparing the hockey team,” goaltender Manny Legace said. “They do a great job.”

Touched by the loss of Jeffery (left) to cancer, Babcock and his family are strong supporters of cancer research and have set up the Jeffery Thomas Hayden Foundation to help fund cancer prevention research.

Not only is Babcock a no-nonsense coach, he’s also a no-nonsense person.

Hayden said when Babcock lived in Cincinnati, another neighbor came up with tickets to the Indianapolis 500. The group made plans to go, and once the plan was set, Babcock was ready.

“He wanted to know who was driving and what time they were leaving,” Hayden said.

Once everything was a go, though, “the guy with the tickets was fiddling around,” Hayden said.

The group started to fall out of synch with the schedule,

“You could see Mike starting to boil.”

Hayden, who’d known the other neighbor for longer than the coach had, assured Babcock everything would be all right – the behavior wasn’t out of the ordinary for the guy, and Hayden, knowing that, had actually accounted for the “fiddling around” in the plan.

Although the group made it to the race just fine, Babcock didn’t like the wasted time.

“He said, `If he was on my team, he’d have been fined $300,’” Hayden said.

Babcock has earned his reputation as a hard-nosed coach, but Hayden says, “He doesn’t always walk around with a scowl on his face all day long.

Hayden knows more than most. He met the Babcocks – Mike, his wife Maureen and Allie, Michael and Taylor – the days they moved into the neighborhood.

The two families lived in a cul-de-sac with nine houses. The Haydens and Babcocks lived at the end of the circle.

“When they moved in, within an hour, the kids were playing in the yard with the other kids,” Hayden said.

Babcock became a neighborhood dad, playing games with the 17 kids on the cul-de-sac who were within three years of each other. He’d play street hockey, baseball, capture the flag and everything else.

“No. 1 in my life, I’m a dad. It’s what I am first and I’m a coach second,” Babcock said.

He got to know Hayden’s twin sons, Jeffrey and Joe, well. They were about the age of the Babcock’s oldest daughter, and his son hung out with the Hayden boys a lot.

So when Jeffrey was struck by a brain tumor after Babcock’s promotion to Anaheim, it hit Babcock hard, too.

“Not a week went by that he didn’t call,” Hayden said. “He was a guy you could talk to.”

Babcock’s way of cutting to the chase was a nice change of pace for Jeffrey’s dad.

“That helped me,” he said. “He didn’t say, `How are you doing?’ He’d get right to the point – `How’s Jeffrey?’”

Sadly, Jeffrey lost his battle with brain cancer last September.

Babcock, who was in Anaheim at rookie camp, dropped everything. He and Maureen took the redeye from California to Cincinnati.

“He said, `What can I do?’” Hayden remembered.

Babcock delivered Jeffery’s eulogy, one friends still talk about today.

“It was a hell of a eulogy,” his dad said.

Babcock talked about many of the traits Jeffrey had – like that of packing in a full day.

“He was the first one up in the morning,” Hayden said. “Jamming as much into a day as possible. Maybe that’s why he looked up to Mike.”

Indeed, Babcock does pack as much into a day as he can, and one of his passions is to lend a hand to the foundation that Jeffrey Hayden’s parents created in his memory to raise awareness of pediatric cancer.

Babcock has been touched by cancer. It took his mother Gail. His friend Mark Rypien, who played in the NFL, lost his 3-year-old son to the disease and Babcock’s agent’s brother also lost his battle to cancer.

“I have a lot of friends that I’ve lost to brain tumors, so we’re trying to make a difference,” Babcock said.

Babcock worked heavily to promote the Jeffrey Thomas Hayden Foundation (www.jthf.org) while in Anaheim, and wants to branch out the awareness to the metro Detroit area as well. He recognizes that his status as a professional coach will bring interest to cancer prevention, and he’s determined to do what he can.

“By hook or by crook, he’s become a celebrity,” Hayden said. “But he says, ‘It’s not about me, it’s about being a good person and doing the right thing.’”

As soon as he arrived in town, he informed the Red Wings he planned to bring his cause to Detroit.

“I think it was right after he signed his contract and right before we went to the press conference,” community relations director Anne Marie Krappmann recalled. “He said, ‘I’m happy to meet you, I’m really involved with a foundation.’”

Babcock approaches the foundation with all the drive he brings to the Red Winds bench.

“There’s been no advancement (in pediatric brain tumors) in 20-30 years,” he says. “That’s how testicular cancer was 20-30 years ago. Now it’s an 87 percent cure rate. We have to do the same things for these kids.”

Hayden helped the coach set up a company to handle his off-ice motivational speaking engagements, hockey camps and other things, and a portion of the funds Babcock earns from those functions are earmarked to the foundation. He’s contributed $20,000 so far, Hayden said.

“One of the blessings you get from being in a position that has some profile is you sometimes get to make a difference,” Babcock explains. “You should darn well take advantage of that opportunity.”

For Babcock, Detroit’s full of new opportunities, and he plans to make the best of it. After all, it’s what he’s been striving toward for his entire professional career.

“I know that coaching the Detroit Red Wings to a Stanley Cup victory was what he wanted to do,” Hayden said. “Now he has the opportunity and he’s going to make the most of it.”

He’s laid out a plan for the team, and that includes winning, not only this year but well into the future. He’s got a three-year contract with an option, and he’s now got added motivation to stay.

“My wife’s already told me she doesn’t want to move again, to keep my job.”

Babcock might be working out the details, but the plan’s simple: Win.

“If things go according to plan, we’re just going to worry about getting better each day and I’ll get to be here until I retire,” he said. “That’s my plan.”

The Jeffrey Thomas Hayden Foundation is a registered 501c(3) non profit organization that was created to Make a Difference in the fight against pediatric brain tumors. For more information visit our web site at www.jthf.org