Maureen and Mike Babcock are packing up their decade-old household in suburban Detroit and moving it to Toronto, and with their kids grown and moved away, they go as empty-nesters.
That's probably just as well, because family life in their new surroundings is about to get a lot more interesting. And difficult.
Babcock was introduced Thursday as the new coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs -- the Mt. Everest of the NHL coaching landscape -- spurning an offer from Detroit and a richer one from Buffalo for a deal worth $50 million over eight years.
He's being paid an unprecedented fortune to lead a team that has qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs once in the last 10 seasons, losing in the first round. It's a team even its executives say is several years from serious Cup contention, a franchise that's being rebuilt from the ground up with a new coach, a new scouting staff and a lot of new players -- if they can dump some underachieving and overpaid so-called stars.
"Mike Babcock is a rich, rich man, but I don't think he'll be a very happy man in Toronto," said an NHL executive. "He and his wife will not be able to go into a restaurant in Toronto without being mobbed -- by the hostess, the waiter and the people at the next table. He won't be able to walk down a street without people saying something."
At first, that might not be so bad. Mike Babcock has no shortage of ego, and egos like to be stroked. He'll be getting high-fives from strangers. Everyone will be congratulating him, wishing him well, encouraging him.
Then the puck drops and the Leafs will have to play the games.
"The team is really bad, and he's behind the bench," the NHL executive said, "and they'll all turn against him."
It's happened to some awfully good coaches and very fine men -- Pat Quinn, Paul Maurice, Ron Wilson and Randy Carlyle -- in these last 10 fruitless seasons in Toronto.
Carlyle was fired in his third season in Toronto. For him, and especially his wife, it was a merciful ending.
"We're talking about a really fine guy here, and he got so much criticism," the NHL executive said. "There was so much negativity. Even his wife got abused, verbally abused, wherever she went. People, they'll say (expletive)."
And if the Babcock kids were still in school, they'd get similar treatment there, too. It's Toronto, and these are its "fans."
The media can be worse. A postgame news conference can quickly turn into a feeding frenzy -- reporters using their pens, cameras and microphones like weapons as they compete with one another for headlines. Maurice once likened dealing with reporters there to "a drive-by shooting."
This is what awaits Babcock, who's has shown little patience or regard for the rather passive and largely supportive Detroit media market.
"Mike Babcock doesn't play. He doesn't score goals," the NHL executive said, "and if you don't have good players in this league, you're not going to be a good coach."
People around the NHL also are a bit curious to see how things unfold in Toronto, with a coach who doesn't always play particularly well with others on the management side of the operation, which the Leafs are soon to find out.
That should be a rude awakening for first-year Leafs President Brendan Shanahan, the former Wings star who played for Babcock one season before retiring to an executive position in the NHL.
The Leafs are without general manager. But that, essentially, is the role Shanahan is filling regardless of titles. He has a couple of front-office hockey assistants and seems to be in the market for someone he might call a general manager. In the end, however, the major hockey decisions are his.
Or are they?
Early on in his tenure in Toronto, Shanahan has established himself as an executive who likes to have a lot of hockey people around him, gather their ideas and run things by committee. That's perceived by some long-time NHL front-office operatives as a lack of confidence.
"There has to be one boss in our business," the NHL executive said. "That's the only way it really works. And they're really going to be in for a huge surprise there in Toronto, because Mike Babcock doesn't like operating by committee.
"All those guys under Brendan who are used to giving their opinions are going to find out real quick that the only opinion that's going to count is Mike's -- and now that they've given him all this money, they can do (nothing) about it."
Shanahan has four years left on his contract at $2.5 million per year. The owners just signed Babcock for twice that long and five times the money.
"Who do you think the owners are going to listen to? They're going to say, "You're the man, Mike," the NHL executive said. "It's going to be very interesting, to say the least."
