With the first month of the hockey season now in the rear view mirror, this might be a good time to do an initial pulse check to see how the new-look Toronto Maple Leafs are doing.
If one focuses exclusively on wins and losses in October, it is not a pretty picture. Despite being a team that has traditionally performed well, and debatably overachieved, in the first month of play, this year’s modest four points in 10 games stands out as an especially bad start.
How bad is it? [1][2] Over the past decade, Toronto has only reached the end of October below .500 one other time — in 2009-10, when Ron Wilson ‘led’ the team to a single win over the first 13 games and a forgettable .250 winning percentage.
Yet, even then, the Leafs were doing better than they are this year.
The boys in blue posted a brutal .200 winning percentage in their opening month of play. When the win-loss record has some fans pining for the glory days of Carlyle and Wilson, something is seriously wrong. So how are the fans and media hanging in there emotionally? Are we hearing early calls for MLSE to fire Mike Babcock?
No, and we obviously shouldn’t be, either.
However, this line of thinking does raise some other interesting questions. Namely, why are the fans still behind Babcock? How much of our continued faith in Babcock can be objectively justified by his performance to date, and how much is driven by his reputation?
A useful frame of reference here is Peter Horachek, who had a similar roster to work with during his 42 games as interim head coach. Horachek had a higher winning percentage (0.274 to Babcock’s 0.200), was slightly more successful defensively (3.33 goals allowed per game, vs. 3.5 for Babcock), and even came out on top via Babcock’s own favourite performance indicator – goal differential (both were negative, but Horachek was slightly ‘less worse’ at -1.4 vs. -1.5).
Of course, other statistics make a strong case that Babcock has improved the team. Shots for have increased this year, with fewer shots against, taking the Leafs from a -3.43 disadvantage to a positive difference of 2.2 more shots than opponents are taking per game [3].
| Shot differential | Goal differential | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Games | win % | SF | SA | net | GF | GA | net | |
| Horachek | 42 | 0.274 | 1229 | 1373 | -144 | 81 | 140 | -59 |
| Babcock | 10 | 0.200 | 310 | 288 | 22 | 20 | 35 | -15 |
| SF/game | SA/game | diff/game | GF/game | GA/game | diff/game | |||
| Horachek | 29.26 | 32.69 | -3.43 | 1.93 | 3.33 | -1.4 | ||
| Babcock | 31 | 28.8 | 2.2 | 2.0 | 3.50 | -1.5 | ||
Obviously, this is far from convincing evidence to make any kind of snap judgement on Babcock. My question is: If Horachek had started this season as head coach of the Maple Leafs, and got the exact same results that Babcock attained this October, would he have already been fired by now? Odds are he probably would have.
Make no mistake, Toronto has a fantastic bench boss; arguably the best hockey coach on the planet [4]. What I am trying to say here is that the hockey world was not being entirely fair to Horachek. Despite similar performance with similarly flawed rosters, the fact remains: One of these two coaches is the highest paid coach in NHL history, while the other was fired without hesitation, and may never coach in the NHL again. Given the relatively small differences in recent performance as Leaf coach, albeit over very limited sample sizes, does this justify such a huge difference in how these men are viewed?
As a scholar of the twin dark arts of social psychology and behavioral economics, this raised two major questions in my mind. First, are snap impulses to judge and fire coaches so early in their tenure the right decision? Second, why do we judge this situation differently when Mike Babcock is involved?
Flawed policy, perverse incentives, and the politics of risk when firing a head coach
Even though I’ll be the first to admit that I would have preferred to have seen Randy Carlyle and Ron Wilson relieved of their coaching duties much earlier, rushing into a decision to fire a coach can have major consequences. Just for fun, consider the following cases:
- Coach A – stepped in as a rookie coach, and posted a .471 winning percentage, one season after his predecessor had led the team to a conference title, while winning at an .826 clip.
- Coach B – after beginning his career with a losing record, this coach had some modest success, then between his fifth and eighth seasons, coached his teams to losing seasons where his winning percentage topped .400 only once over a span of four years.
What do you do? Do you fire one or both of these men? Or be patient and give them more time?
As it turns out, Coach A ended his career regarded by many as one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time: University of North Carolina’s Dean Smith. Despite starting with a losing record in the 1961-62 season, by the time he retired, he left the game with most coaching wins in NCAA Division I history.
Meanwhile, Coach B is actually ‘Coach K’, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.
Both men are considered among the all-time greats of their sport. Each was asked to coach their national Olympic team, with both meeting the challenge and bringing home gold medals. In his book The Carolina Way, Dean Smith made an important distinction between losing and failure. When losing is handled properly, it can be an important part of success. Smith recalled how he found it, “easier to teach and learn after a loss,” and noted, “if a loss helped us become a better team because of what we learned from it, it would be hard to categorize it as a failure”.
Looking to the NHL for a similar narrative, Al Arbour missed the playoffs in two of the three seasons he coached the St Louis Blues, before leading the NY Islanders to a losing season and a .359 winning percentage; this despite some great support from future Hall of Fame defenceman Denis Potvin, who won the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year that season. That kind of performance is not going to make you a leading candidate for the Jack Adams trophy, but maybe it should.
Over the first five years of his coaching career in the NHL, the very same Jack Adams, who the coach of the year trophy is named after, had a winning percentage that topped .500 only once. Things got better, of course. By the end of his ninth season, he had coached Detroit to their first ever Stanley Cup, and would lead them to two more titles before he retired. The lesson here is simple: Judging a coach exclusively on wins and losses at the start of their career could cost a team decades of winning under the guidance of a future Hall of Fame coach.
Now consider a situation where a team chooses to fire or keep a coach, but makes a mistake in the process. Are both of these errors equal? Predictably, the answer is not so much.
This is linked to something commonly known as Type I and Type II error. Type I error is essentially a false positive. For example, say you hire a coach who you think will be great, and he isn’t. Or, maybe you’re Ottawa and you draft Alexandre Daigle first overall, thinking he’ll be the greatest player from Quebec since Mario Lemieux [5]. Before long, these errors will be obvious for all to see, and all you can do is adjust and correct it as soon as possible.
In contrast, Type II error is a false negative, where you have a useful asset, but fail to appreciate its value and discard it. A key difference between these types of errors is what happens next. If UNC decided to fire Dean Smith after his first losing season, maybe he goes to another team and becomes a legend elsewhere. On the other hand, maybe he never gets a chance again, or quits coaching altogether to seek out a different profession. The amount of risk involved –- i.e. the chances of being recognized for making a mistake — is very different in these two scenarios. In Type II case, this outcome depends a lot on external factors. So this means that the outcomes are out of a team’s control, right?
Not so fast.
Interestingly, the risk involved can be controlled to some extent, and also changes depending on perspective. With Type II error, it’s possible for a team to make a bad decision, and never visibly suffer any consequences. Toronto opted not to resign Curtis Joseph, but then replaced him with Ed Belfour. Is there a chance that Cujo could have outperformed Belfour? It’s possible, but we’ll never know for sure. What we do know is that the team reduced their overall risk exposure by having a great plan B ready to go.
A team can influence this outcome in more ways than that, thanks to what is known in economics as “perverse incentives.” When you consider this from an individual’s perspective, things change dramatically. Imagine it’s the end of the 2014-15 season, and you have a decision to make about Peter Horachek’s coaching future. What are the implications of making an error of each type?
If Leafs management makes a Type I error and gives him another few months to see how he does and he still fails to pan out, the more time they give him the worse this mistake will look for the team as bad consequences accumulate and compound. Thus, there is an incentive to act quickly, as pressure mounts to fire him sooner rather than later.
Now, if Leafs management made a Type II error, and fired Horachek even though he is potentially a good coach, by finding an exceptional coach over the summer to succeed him, they minimize their chances of being recognized for making a Type II error to almost nothing.
Here’s where things get disturbing.
One strategy to ensure a more favourable outcome from a team’s perspective is if the Leafs fire Horachek before he can create any doubt about their decision through performing well in Toronto. Moreover, because they fired him, this reduces the odds that Horachek will ever get the chance to disprove this elsewhere by coaching another team. In this case, the team won’t look bad, no matter how good of a coach he could have been.
Now consider the case of Dallas Eakins. At one point, the Leafs could have fired Carlyle and installed Eakins in his place. This made sense on a lot of levels. Eakins had direct experience coaching young players on the Leaf roster, and had just come off of a successful run as head coach of the Marlies (recall the earlier section on confirmation bias). The decision to let him go to coach the Oilers could have backfired in a major way if he became the next Jon Cooper.
It’s worth noting that this sort of thing has happened before in the Leafs organization. Not only was Marc Crawford head coach of the Marlies before leading Colorado to their first Stanley Cup; worse still, his assistant was multiple Cup winner Joel Quenneville. As things turned out, Eakins’ story in Edmonton did not have a happy ending. Hopefully he’ll get an opportunity soon with another team, but the fact that he has not come back to haunt the Leafs, at least not yet, makes the decision to let him go seem better than it would have if the Oilers made the playoffs while the Leafs remained on the outside looking in.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the Leafs are deliberately acting as some kind of evil puppetmaster and trying to destroy any head coach’s career, nor am I advocating that they should. I’m merely stating that the stakes are different for the person and the team, and also that what is in the best interests of one party does not always align flawlessly with the best interest of the other.
Incidentally, this is why draft pick compensation for signing coaches is potentially a very good thing. It provides an incentive for teams to ensure that when coaches leave, they do this looking as favourable as possible. Kyle Dubas’ strategy of embracing a major league baseball model and using the Orlando Solar Bears as a second-level farm team is actually a huge positive step in this regard — not only for player development, but for developing coaching talent as well. If it works, the Leafs establish a pipeline of head coaching talent, and if they leave for positions elsewhere, Toronto receives extra draft picks. Who doesn’t like those?
Cognition, bias, and why things are different for Mike Babcock
The short answer to this question is: Confirmation bias.
To provide some background information, there has been a lot of recent support among leading psychologists in favour of a theory that people generally use two types, or systems, of thinking [6].
System 1 thinking is largely automatic, while System 2 involves more effort. Some advantages of system 1 thinking: It’s faster and uses less energy, which is biologically critical for the brain. It also frees up attention to focus on other things, and favours more habit-driven behavior. Disadvantages of system 1 thinking are simple: you’re more likely to make mistakes.
One common mistake involves mental shortcuts, or heuristics, such as stereotypes. If you get nervous walking down a dark alley at night because you hear heavy footsteps, that’s system 1 kicking in to warn you about a potential danger. Of course, making snap judgements about people based on their appearance in all situations can cause significant social problems[7], which is why we should all be thankful system 2 allows us to override these ‘instincts’ where appropriate.
Interestingly, the mistakes people make using system 1 thinking are reasonably predictable, and fit neatly into different types and categories. When you’re asked to list players who are likely to have a breakout season, and keep thinking of ones on your favourite team, you are succumbing to availability bias. When you use your Hockey News or McKeen’s guide to help you choose your fantasy hockey roster, you’re demonstrating a susceptibility to authority bias. If the Leafs are playing great in February, but you can’t enjoy it because your stomach is churning and you can’t help feeling that another spring collapse is about to happen, that’s cognitive dissonance at play [8]. There are lots more of these biases, see if you can collect them all!
Confirmation bias occurs when you judge someone, and base expectations on previous impressions, rather than what you could objectively observe in the present. Effectively, you discard new information so you can confirm a pre-existing view. This often happens without conscious awareness, and can seem like a legitimate gut instinct about someone or something. Joffrey Lupul is due for his next injury any day now. Bernier will let in a soft goal early. Reimer has rebound control issues. Phaneuf is overdue to make a bad play. These views often have nothing to do with recent performance, and everything to do with durable stereotypes we’ve formed and refuse to let go of.
Of course, stereotypes can be positive as well, which creates a variation on confirmation bias known as the halo effect. Nylander will generate an exciting scoring chance any minute now. Morgan Rielly will have another strong two-way game tonight. The resulting consequences can be substantial, because reputations can make or break someone’s career in a hurry. In under two months, David Clarkson had exactly zero chance of being anything but a pariah in Toronto. Dion Phaneuf has some fantastic stats that support how good he can be at successfully shutting down elite scorers. But despite this and his ability to consistently give the team high quality minutes every night, many people still think of Dion as a disappointment. The sad truth of the matter is once you establish a reputation, it’s next to impossible to overturn it.
In Horachek’s case, being complicit as an assistant coach at the end of Carlyle’s tenure, and previously being let go by an unremarkable Florida Panthers team, almost certainly contributed to shaping expectations of him in a bad way. Was anyone shocked to see him let go? Not really, and it had little to nothing to do with what he deserved based on how he did his job on a daily basis in Toronto.
On the other hand, let’s conduct a brief thought experiment and play a word association game on Mike Babcock. What comes to mind? Probably words like winner, triple-gold club, Olympics, Stanley Cup, Detroit. These kinds of associations are far from insignificant, and help place him in a very favourable and enviable position.
Best of all, Mike Babcock knows this, and actively uses it to his advantage. This is evident constantly, and perhaps most famously when Babcock stopped a recent press conference to correct RDS reporter Francois Gagnon after he made the mistake of stating that Babcock had “been a winner” in past tense. When Babcock is being overtly positive like this, he’s coaching us, teaching Leaf fans and media what to think, and actively shaping our stereotypes of him. Of course, Babcock is not the first person to do this, but the important thing is it works.
The best part is he’s using this same approach to build and nurture confidence in his players. Jake Gardiner is one player who has gone from the doghouse under Carlyle to one of the Leafs’ best players so far this season.
Nazem Kadri, who was critiqued in previous years for his physical conditioning and off-ice habits, seems reinvigorated under Babcock, who was described by Kadri as “very positive, very supportive, encouraging.” In Kadri’s case, the chance to receive any feedback at all has been appreciated. “In past years, communication has been lacking,” said Kadri. “It’s just nice to have that daily conversation about what you need to do or what we should be doing or what you’ve done well.” It seems like Kadri’s entire mindset has begun to change for the better in some very important ways. Not only is he taking more responsibility for his play, he also has a much clearer idea of exactly what he needs to do to improve even further. All of this is a very encouraging sign.
Research by Stanford’s Carol Dweck indicated that people perform much better, and display more resilience in the face of adversity, if they believe their performance results from hard work and not merely talent. This fascinating dynamic between Babcock’s coaching methods, how players feel, and what ultimately transpires on the ice is an important one, and merits extended treatment in its own article (if this subject interests you, keep your eyes open for an upcoming piece on this topic over the next few weeks).
Overall, it’s difficult to tell when extra time or the right situation can make the difference between a coach with the potential to be an all-time great and one, like Horachek, who was clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, even though luck and timing will always be important, never underestimate the power of resilience and crafting a positive stereotype. Confirmation bias can be a valuable tool if used properly. Even an unimpressive early record can be overcome in time, and winning has a funny way of changing everything.
Consider the story of another hockey coach who had a very unimpressive start to his career. After back-to-back losing seasons coaching the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors, he was fired and sought refuge coaching the varsity men’s hockey team at the University of Lethbridge, a team that had never made the playoffs once in the program’s history. In his rookie season there, he led the team to a national championship. Convincingly. A year later, he was back in the WHL, and before long he finally got his shot as a head coach in the NHL. More than 500 wins, one Stanley cup, two Olympic gold medals, and one world championship later, Mike Babcock may not be racking up wins in Toronto just yet, but just give him time. He will teach this team how to win. If we pay attention to him, he may even provide enough coaching therapy to ease some of the post-traumatic stress many Leaf fans suffer from after so many bad years.
One can only hope, anyway. But thanks to Babcock and this new era of positivity, hope doesn’t seem to be in such short supply anymore.
Footnotes
[1] I’m including footnotes this article in tribute to our fallen comrades at Grantland. Hope we get to see new articles from @DownGoesBrown elsewhere soon
[2] If anyone was nervous that Babcock would perform a miracle, lead us to contention for a playoff spot, and mess up our draft, you can relax. There is no need to cancel your Auston Matthews Leaf jersey order just yet.
[3] For what its worth, both men successfully improved the Leafs possession numbers dramatically over whatever the hell it was that Randy Carlyle was doing to this team, when he was not fighting that epic age-old battle of man vs toaster.
[4] The selection committee for Team Canada sure seems to think so. Congratulations Coach Babcock!
[5] Spoiler alert: He wasn’t. Not even remotely close.
[6] For a highly readable overview of the two systems of thinking, check out: Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
[7] Or you could be one of the leading candidates to be the next President of the United States, so what do I know?
[8] For more on cognitive dissonance, check out Quinn MacKeen’s fantastic article on bias in prospect evaluations.
