NHL Hall-of-Famer talks about one of Mike Babcock's biggest prick moves

Before his rollercoaster behind the Leafs' bench that ended in reports surfacing about mistreatment of rookies and other players, Mike Babcock experienced a lot of success in Detroit. However, in one of his final seasons behind the Red Wings' bench, and the final season of Mike Modano's career, things had ended on a sour note. It should have told us all we needed to know about Babcock at the time.

In his final NHL season, Mike Modano decided to sign with his hometown Red Wings and was closing in on a milestone of 1500 games played. Going into the season, he only needed 41 games to reach the milestone and looked well on his way to hitting it. That is, until Babcock decided to scratch him for a few games leading up to the final game of the regular season. Going into that final game, everyone expected Modano to play, including Wings GM Ken Holland.

Modano, who was on the Cam and Strick Podcast earlier this week said of the infamous scratching, "Nobody had any idea until we got to the rink. Kenny Holland didn't even know. He said had he known he would've said to Mike, 'This guy's gotta play.'"

Talk about a gutless move from Babcock, scratching one of the greatest American-born players to stop him from reaching a milestone that not too many reach. He even scratched him for the Wings' last home game against Minnesota, the same team that Modano started his career with. Modano went on to say, "it was a bitter pill and to this day it would've been nice to finish with that 1500Nick (Lindstrom) was upset by it. Some of the older guys were."


With the stories that emerged after Babcock was fired from Toronto, no one at this point is surprised that he scratched Modano at 1499 games, even though they had first place in the division locked up. Given his antics behind closed doors, the fact he isn't coaching in the NHL again already isn't shocking or isn't nearly as shocking as preventing a HHOFer from reaching such a huge milestone for no other reason than his own ego.