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Blue Jackets apologize for Mike Babcock’s antics

Griffin Crest / NHL / September 19, 2023

Blue Jackets apologize for Mike Babcock’s antics

The Columbus Blue Jackets have hit some heavy waves in their organization lately, even forcing Mike Babcock to go overboard and resign from his head coaching position. With the Babcock antics out of the way, Columbus has now apologized on their behalf.

While meeting with players across the year, it became unveiled that Babcock asked players to look through their phones. Even going as far as scrolling through the players’ pictures. Ultimately, Babcock tried to defend himself, but the smoke was too much.

Mike Babcock resigns as Blue Jackets Head Coach

“While meeting with our players and staff I asked them to share, off their phones, family pictures as part of the process of getting to know them better. There was absolutely nothing more to it than that.

“The way this was portrayed on the Spittin’ Chicklets podcast was a gross misrepresentation of those meetings and extremely offensive.

“These meetings have been very important and beneficial, not only for me but for our players and staff as well, and to have them depicted like this is irresponsible and completely inaccurate.”

In reaction to Babcock’s resignation, Majority Owner and Governor John P. McConnell released a statement regarding the situation.

“Our ownership group is deeply frustrated and disappointed by the events of the past week. We have been in contact with John Davidson, Jarmo Kekalainen and our management team throughout this process and were in full agreement with Mike Babcock stepping down and Pascal Vincent leading our team as head coach,” the statement read.

“We had candid conversations with our leadership after last season about our goals and expectations for growth and progress on the ice in 2023-24. Those expectations are still in place and can still be achieved, so we do not anticipate further changes to our hockey leadership team at this time. Additional disruptions would be detrimental to our players and coaches as they prepare for the opening of training camp in two days. We will continue to have regular communications with our hockey leadership and are looking forward to an exciting season.”