Former Red Wings star dubs Oilers 'idiots' over Mike Babcock hire

Contract talks between Mike Babcock and the Edmonton Oilers are expected to begin early next week, with an official announcement potentially coming as soon as Monday or Tuesday.

The decision has not been without backlash. A wave of former players have spoken out in recent days, sharing stories about Babcock's treatment of players throughout his stops in Anaheim, Detroit, Toronto and Columbus. Aaron Ward is one of them.

The three-time Stanley Cup champion spent five seasons with the Detroit Red Wings as a player and has covered the league for years as a TSN analyst and he has his own personal history with Babcock that goes well beyond secondhand accounts.

He appeared on the 'Coming In Hot' podcast this week alongside one of the co-hosts Jason York, himself a former NHLer who was pushed out by Babcock during his first Anaheim training camp, and made clear he was not going to be diplomatic about any of it and made clear he was not going to be diplomatic about any of it.

He did not mince words about what he thinks of the organization's decision.

"In northern Alberta right now and you've got that three-ring circus going on," Ward said. "You're just an idiot. You're just an idiot, sir."

Ward's frustration runs deeper than the Columbus phone incident that triggered the NHL's investigation. He went back further to his own time as a TSN analyst, when he says Babcock personally tried to have him removed from the network after Ward reported something out of Detroit that turned out to be accurate.

"Babs called the powers-that-be to try to get me fired," Ward said.

He walked through what happened. Ward had a source in Detroit leak information that he reported publicly. Babcock apparently took issue with it and made calls to TSN management to have Ward dealt with. Ward found out about it in real time, on New Year's Eve, while coaching his son's U14 hockey tournament in Baltimore.

"I'm sitting there, the clock is about to ring in, and I got a call from someone at TSN," Ward said. "I'm not gonna believe this, Babs is trying to get you fired right now. I go, what? He goes, look at the clip."

Babcock went on local television and called him out by name, dismissing him as a nobody with no business reporting on the team.

"I get mentioned by Babs on local TV for being some nobody and who's this guy to release the information? He has no idea what he's talking about," Ward said. "Well, guess what, idiot, it came true the next day."

Ward said the episode is consistent with how Babcock has always operated, as someone who needs total control over his environment including the media around his team. It fed into a broader point Ward made about the level of resentment Babcock generated inside his own locker rooms over the years, particularly in Detroit.

He said that through mutual contacts who ended up in management within the Red Wings organization, he heard for years about how players genuinely felt about their coach.

"There was basically take a ticket, and they were gonna hold a raffle on who got to tell Babs he got his walking papers first when he was in Detroit," Ward said. "There was a lineup of guys. They hate him."

The NHLPA had originally requested the NHL investigation and said this week that even with Babcock cleared to coach, it found his conduct "very concerning." Ward suggested there is more the players' association chose not to release the first time around and that the Oilers pushing forward may cause them to reconsider.

"There's a reason that when you are potentially gonna get hired, all of a sudden the PA's feathers get ruffled and say, whoa, hold on a second," Ward said. "We have other things we didn't feel necessary to release, because hey, we thought this guy was a d-bag enough that he was gonna not be hired the first time. So now that you're gonna do this, here's the rest of it."

Ward also brought up Paul Kariya, the Hall of Fame winger who played for Babcock in Anaheim during the 2002–03 season, when the Ducks reached the Stanley Cup Final. Kariya is widely regarded as one of the more thoughtful, private individuals to have played the game, and Ward said stories about how Babcock handled him and his family left an impression.

"It's not even the stuff he used to do," Ward said. "I heard stories about how he screws with Paul Kariya. Who screws with Paul Kariya? No one screws with Kariya... He's the nicest, most unassuming individual, but you start screwing with him and his family when the guy requests you not to."

Ward's co-host York had his own story from those Anaheim days. York had returned to the Ducks as a free agent for the 2001-02 season and turned in a solid year. But when Babcock took over ahead of the 2002-03 season for his first NHL head coaching job, he separated York and two other veterans, Denny Lambert and German Titov, from the rest of the team and made them skate with the minor leaguers, with no coach and no goalie, for the bulk of camp. When York confronted Babcock about it directly, he says Babcock looked him in the eye and told him not to worry, that he was one of his guys. York was sent to the AHL shortly after and eventually traded to Nashville.

The Oilers are expected to formally announce the hire as early as next week. Ward, for one, thinks they will regret it. And so do we.

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