Term Of Contract Was Sticking Point Between Red Wings, Babcock
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
DETROIT - The Toronto Maple Leafs wooed head coach Mike Babcock away from the Detroit Red Wings with a reported eight-year, $50 million contract, and Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said the term - rather than the dollar amount - was the part of the deal Detroit did not want to match.
"I couldn't justify going past five years," Holland said Wednesday. "Mike had been here for 10 years ... but we've only won one playoff round in four years ... We've got bigger goals than to make the playoffs, so to wake up two, three years from now if we're not able to kind of take this program to the next level, then everybody starts looking at options.
"Because I've been here for 18 years, because Mike has been here for 10 years, there was a limit on term," Holland said, "and when you've got a limit on term and the people that you're negotiating against don't have a limit on term, it starts to become a factor."
Babcock's deal with Toronto will pay him an average of $6.25 million per year. Detroit reportedly made a final offer of $20 million over five years, or $4 million per year. Holland shot down the idea that upping the dollars per year would have swayed Babcock to forego the option of a longer contract elsewhere.
Holland suggested the total amount of the contract was the overriding factor, and since the Red Wings would only go five years, they could not compete.
"You start to try to get to the number that's out there - superstar players don't make that amount of money ... I don't even know if there's three or four players in the entire league that make that kind of money," Holland said. "If I held on term, I couldn't - there was nowhere to even get remotely close to what other options he had."
Holland said he had no doubt Babcock's message was still getting across to players, noting the team was still playing hard and continuing to make the playoffs despite some notable obstacles, but Holland expressed doubt about how long that be the case.
"Certainly, when you offer a five-year term, I certainly felt that Mike had three, four, five years that he could continue to get the most out of our group, but to start to think that you were going to go beyond that - again, 10 years is an eternity in professional sports," Holland said. "I was offering half that term already, so ultimately I made a decision to stick tight to the five years. Mike totally understood."
Toronto made Babcock the most highly paid NHL coach by a considerable margin. Holland did not seem particularly surprised by that development.
"Any time you're an unrestricted free agent in the prime of your career, there's going to be opportunities that probably will stagger you," Holland said. "I'm aware of what the industry pays, but in order sometimes to get people, you've got to go above and beyond the industry standards in order to try to get somebody to come to you. I'm happy for Mike."