It was a story that absolutely blew up social media after it leaked once former Toronto Maple Leafs' head coach Mike Babcock retired. The infamous story is that Babcock had a private conversation with Leafs' forward Mitch Marner and made him list all his teammates in order of best to worst work ethic. Babcock then revealed the list to the rest of the team while on a team plane which obviously put some divide amongst teammates. Marner was asked about the incident by the media but he's always refused to speak about it. However Babcock decided to open up about it while speaking to Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic. He denies the version of the story that's been made public. «Yeah, that's not how that happened, actually,'' Babcock said. «I was working with Lou (Lamoriello) at that time, we made it very clear our No. 1 priority was to make sure these young guys, Mitch, Matty (Auston Matthews), were going to be the best pros they can be at 23, 24. And turn them into the hardest working, best players they can possibly be.«So Mitch was in my office. We were talking about work ethic. I asked him where he ranked on the scale. And that was no problem, that was just a private thing. It was a good meeting, Mitch left. But then I was meeting, I'm pretty sure it was with (Tyler) Bozak, afterward. Bozy was an important part of our team. What I ended up doing — and I made a big-time mistake, I knew as soon as I did it — when we were talking about competing and I said, ‘Well look where Mitch ranks it.'«Well, as soon as I did that, and he saw the list, I knew that I had made a major mistake. After the meeting with Bozak, I went right into the dressing room. I grabbed Mitch and said, ‘Mitch, this is what I did. I screwed you here.'''«Now, in saying that though, what I should have done in hindsight, I should have stopped everybody and said, ‘This is what I did to Mitch. I screwed him.' Now, he didn't want to make a big deal out of it. But I could have made a lesser deal of it,''' Babcock said.«But (for) anyone to think Mitch Marner and Mike Babcock didn't have a relationship, or Mitch didn't play great for me or anything like that, that's sadly mistaken.''What do you think of Babcock's explanation?
