Mike Babcock Given Head Coaching Job With Team Canada

MONTREAL – Team Canada is officially in Mike Babcock’s hands.

He was introduced as the coach of the 2010 men’s Olympic team Thursday, heading up a staff that includes Ken Hitchcock, Lindy Ruff and Jacques Lemaire.

Babcock has been one of the NHL’s most successful coaches in recent years. He’s helped the Detroit Red Wings to back-to-back Stanley Cup finals – winning in 2008 – and has posted at least 50 wins in four consecutive seasons.

Babcock says the Stanley Cup was special but this is different: “Any time you have a chance to play for your country or be involved with your country is a whole new level of special.”

This is a position Babcock has coveted for some time.

In the aftermath of Detroit’s Stanley Cup celebration in 2008, he sought out Steve Yzerman in the hallway at Mellon Arena and asked him how to apply for the Olympic job. Yzerman had yet to assume the position of executive director but he told Babcock that Hockey Canada already knew he was interested.

“I’m certain that Mike is the right guy to take the reins and lead this team,” Yzerman said Thursday.

Now that he has the job, the challenge in Vancouver will be significant.

There will be immense pressure on a Canadian team that is coming off its worst-ever showing at the Olympics, having finished seventh at the 2006 Games in Turin.

Hitchcock is the lone holdover from that coaching staff. He was also an assistant on the 2002 team that won gold in Salt Lake City.

Interestingly, Hitchcock had intended to take a pass on these Olympics until losing the gold medal game at the 2008 IIHF World Hockey Championship. He was the head coach of that team and fielded questions from foreign journalists afterwards about whether the Canadian standard was slipping.

That changed his mind.

“I didn’t feel good after the world championships because some people from other countries made comments that really pissed me off,” Hitchcock said in February. “Just some comments about, ‘Has your country lost your standing as a world power and all this crap.’

“That kind of got the fuel going.”

Ruff will have some fuel of his own. He was the head coach of the Canadian team that recently suffered a second straight loss to Russia in the final of the world championship.

“Let’s skip the season and start it now,” Ruff said Thursday.

Lemaire has coached more than 1,100 NHL games with the Montreal Canadiens, New Jersey Devils and Minnesota Wild, and won a Stanley Cup with the Devils in 1995. He stepped down as Wild head coach at the end of the season after missing the playoffs.

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