Mike Babcock Breaks His Silence And Discusses Marner Incident

Mike Babcock has remained silent about his departure from the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Mitch Marner incident. He has now broken his silence with Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic as he kickstarts his new career as an NBC analyst.

For those who don’t recall, Babcock asked Marner, who was a rookie, create a list of teammates who do not put in an adequate amount of work away from the ice. Babcock then read this list to the rest of the team. Marner began to cry in the room and his teammates, including the ones listed, were upset with Babcock, not Marner. This created significant controversy and made some question whether Babcock should ever coach again. There has been radio silence since his departure from the Maple Leafs and the release of this story. Until now.

Here is what Babcock had to say.

"Yeah, thats not how that happened, actually. I was working with Lou (Lamoriello) at the time, we made it very clear our No. 1 priority was to make sure these young guys, Mitch, Matty (Auston Matthews), were going to be the best pros they can be at 23,24, and turn them into the hardest working best players they can possibly be."

"So Mitch was in my office. We were talking about work ethic. I asked him where he ranked on the scale. And that was no problem, that was just a private thing. It was a good meeting, Mitch left. But then I was meeting, I'm pretty sure it was (Tyler) Bozak, afterward. Bozy was an important part of our team. What I ended up doing - and I made a big-time mistake, I knew as soon as I did it - when we were talking about competing and I said, "Well look where Mitch ranks it." Well as soon as I did that, and he saw the list, I knew that I had made a major mistake. After the meeting with Bozak, I went right into the dressing room. I grabbed Mitch and said, "Mitch, this is what I did. I screwed you here.'"

"The Story wasn't right. In the end, though, you do lots of things over 32 years as a coach that you'd like to have back. Have you ever had a conversation with your wife when two words come out of your mouth and you'd like to reach within your arms and pull the words back?" It's human nature. In the heat of hockey, there's lots of things said. But you try to create an environment that's good. When you look at Mitch Marner and the time he spend with Mike Babcock, Mitch Marner was a player. We had a good relationship."

Photographer: Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire