The idea of the new-coach bump is old news in the NHL, and Mike Babcock isn’t pretending otherwise.
As the Edmonton Oilers come out of the gates this season, Babcock was asked whether they’re getting that immediate lift that so many teams seem to find when the bench boss changes. His answer was blunt: the effect is real, even if there’s nothing mysterious about it.
“I know nothing about it,” Babcock said. “I know when you’re a first-year head coach in the NHL, your first year goes good and the second year you get fired.
“No, you can look at it place after place after place, it’s reality. The second year for lots of guys is the toughest year. Now, is it the buy-in, is it the message the same, is it that you’ve got three guys hurt.”
That’s the kind of spark teams and fans have seen plenty of times before. A club gets stuck, the coach gets moved out, and suddenly the room feels lighter.
The pressure shifts. The effort sharpens.
The results usually follow, at least for a while.
The source material points to a recent example in Vegas, where the Golden Knights made a bold coaching change at a tricky point in the season and then caught fire. After bringing in John Tortorella at the end of March, Vegas won its next four games and picked up 15 of a possible 16 points down the stretch.
That surge carried them into the playoffs rolling, and they beat the Utah Mammoth and Anaheim Ducks in six games apiece before sweeping the President’s Cup-winning Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Final. Their run ended with a 4-2 series loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup, but the reset had already done its job.
Babcock said he’s seen that kind of thing from the inside, too.
“I know when I went to Anaheim, my second year wasn’t as good, but (Paul) Kariya left and (Jean-Sebastian) Giguere was hurt,” said Babcock, who coached the then-Mighty Ducks to a second-place finish in the Pacific Division with a 95-point season before falling to the New Jersey Devils in the 2002-03 Stanley Cup Finals during his first season behind an NHL bench.
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