Leon Draisaitl said the Edmonton Oilers’ leadership group was won over quickly by Mike Babcock, offering a rare inside look at how the club came to back its new head coach. Speaking in Munich during the NHL’s European Player Media Tour, Draisaitl said it was “pretty clear pretty quick” that Babcock “could be our guy.”
The timing matters because the comments surfaced over the weekend, when the NHL’s European Player Media Tour put offseason storylines back in front of the sport. For the Oilers, this one carries extra weight. Connor McDavid is still chasing a championship, and the team is trying to build enough around him to finally get there.
Draisaitl did not sound like someone second-guessing the hire. He said the meetings with Babcock were “great” and pointed to the coach’s approach, saying it was about what he sees and how he speaks to the leaders who want to be coached and held accountable. That sort of buy-in from a core player matters for any team, but especially for a club that has been to two of the last three Stanley Cup finals and is entering the 2026 offseason with no margin for drift.
The appeal of the move is easy to hear in Draisaitl’s comments. The harder part is ignoring the other side of the story. Babcock’s last attempted return to the NHL in Columbus ended in less than 90 days, before his first season there even began. That history follows him into Edmonton, where the Oilers are choosing to trust what their leaders saw in the room rather than what happened the last time he tried to come back.
That is the real test now. The meetings may have gone well, and the locker room may already sound aligned, but the only judgment that will matter comes once the Oilers start playing for points and pressure returns. For Babcock, the hiring is no longer the story. The season is.
