{"id":100591,"date":"2026-06-23T20:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T20:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/100591\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T20:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T20:13:07","slug":"mike-babcock-says-edmonton-oilers-stars-all-in-on-hire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/100591\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Babcock says Edmonton Oilers\u2019 stars all in on hire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Babcock told reporters on Tuesday that the Edmonton Oilers<\/a>\u2019 star players are all in on him taking the\u00a0reins\u00a0of the organization. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Babcock said at his introductory news conference that after Oilers\u2019 general manager Stan Bowman contacted him regarding the team\u2019s head coaching vacancy, Babcock met with Connor McDavid<\/a>, Leon Draisaitl<\/a> and Zach Hyman<\/a> to gauge their interest in having him potentially take over as head coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeon, Connor, and Zach Hyman<\/a>, and the rest of this leadership want to get better. And that\u2019s what they\u2019ve asked of me. And they\u2019ve told me, we have to be better, and we expect you to make us better. And I said,\u00a0well,\u00a0that\u2019s great to talk about in June. When camp starts and you\u2019re making a guy do things he might not be so happy. And they said no, that\u2019s not how it\u2019s going to be,\u201d Babcock said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all committed, all in on winning. And, obviously in that time period we had gone through enough things and talked about enough things that they felt comfortable enough with the process, or I wouldn\u2019t be here. I was very clear to them unless you\u2019re 100 per cent all in on Mike Babcock, I have no interest in being the coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babcock also emphasized buy-in from the entire roster, not just the core pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody on that team has to be important. Even the guys that don\u2019t play every night… We\u2019re going to empower all of those players, and they\u2019re going to love it. I think it\u2019s harder on the big dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babcock wasofficially hired by the Oilers earlier on Tuesday<\/a>as the 19th\u00a0coach in club history, replacing Kris Knoblauch, who was fired at the end of the season.The move to hire Babcock came a few days after he was cleared in an NHL investigation requested by the NHL Players\u2019 Association relating to his brief time with theColumbus Blue Jackets<\/a>\u00a0in 2023.The findings of that investigation allowed the 63-year-old to return to an NHL bench.<\/p>\n

The players\u2019 union called allegations of Babcock\u2019s conduct with Columbus \u201cconcerning\u201d in a statement last week but acknowledged the league\u2019s decision to allow him to return to coaching.<\/p>\n

TSN Hockey Insider Darren Dreger originally reported Edmonton\u2019s interest in Babcock earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Babcock was hired as the Blue Jackets\u2019 head coach in July of 2023 but resigned before the season started after a report from the Spittin\u2019 Chiclets podcast indicated he had asked players to share personal photos from their mobile devices.<\/p>\n

The situation was investigated by the NHL Players\u2019 Association before Babcock announced his resignation.<\/p>\n

Babcock said Tuesday that a disconnect\u00a0that\u00a0formed early on in Columbus pushed him toward resigning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very evident before the year started. I hadn\u2019t bench anybody, I hadn\u2019t talked to anybody, I hadn\u2019t sat anybody out. And it was evident that we weren\u2019t together as a staff right from the get go. My wife gave me a call and she said \u2018It\u2019s time to get out of there.\u2019 I\u2019d been retired. I was pretty good at it, I got back to being retired.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if he felt he crossed the line, Babcock said he believes he did not, but he\u00a0did do some\u00a0self-reflection.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, to be honest with you, any time you make anybody feel uncomfortable in your life, you should take a look at yourself and you should say, \u2018How could I do that better?\u2019\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n

Babcock owns a career regular-season head coaching record of 700-418-164 with 19 ties. He also coached Team Canada to Olympic gold medals in 2010 and 2014, as was at the helm for gold at the World Junior Championship (1997), Men\u2019s World Championship (2004) and World Cup of Hockey (2016).<\/p>\n

Related Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Babcock told reporters on Tuesday that the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 star players are all in on him taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[52,24168],"class_list":["post-100591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-edmonton","tag-mike-babcock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}