Mark Messier puts the smack down on the Oilers signing Babcock?

Greg Wyshynski posted this on Twitter last night and I have to say it made my ears perk up quite a bit. Messier does not take me as a guy that would normally be this critical of what a team does. he is usually very diplomatic and cautious about his wording out of respect for teams and players but here he is about as scathing as I have ever heard him to be. Mark is a player that knows a lot of players in the league and knows the character of those players. For him to use adjectives such as "shocked" and "horrified" when talking about the hiring of Mike Babcock is pretty telling. I cannot say that O know the goings of what happened in room that Babcock coached but I trust Messier when he says he "could go on and on" about it. I have personally tried to play devil's advocate about Mike Babcock. Maybe some players overreacted in Detroit? The Marner situation where he asked Marner to list the teams' laziest players and proceeded to read off that list in the room or team meeting or whatever seemed very odd to me, and I would of loved to have heard his reasoning, but completely outlandish? maybe not. The Columbus situation I also thought could have been overblown with him asking to look at players phones to see family pictures and such. Especially when some players in Columbus seemed fine with it. However, when Messier comes out like this who would know much more than I would about the things that happen in the room I take a step back for sure, something is amiss here. The other thing I find interesting about Messiers comments is that he was confused by how it seems the players were the catalysts for the hire of Babcock and how he mentions that this sort of thing simply would not happen when he played. Messier talks about the how the leadership in the room is there to protect players in the room and seems to question how credible they will be doing that if they were in fact the ones that chose the coach... I get this. Pretty easy for the finger now to be pointed at the leadership in the room if things fall about here creating division on the team. 

My theory on what happened here was that the Oilers ran out of options for coaches to hire. Edmonton seemed to go all in on Cassidy when he was fired by Vegas prematurely and when the Golden Knights did not give them authorization to speak to Cassidy the Oilers brass leaked that fact to the public in order to get enough sympathy to force Vegas' hand to change their mind. There was talk that they might have even figured the league would get involved. That didn't work and when it did not, they were left in a very awkward spot with the coach they already had in Knoblauch and pretty much had to let him go. Oilers G.M. Stan Bowman apparently talked to recently fired coach Craig Berube and those talks didn't seem to go anywhere.  Peter Laviolette was available, and I predicted he would not go there until he saw roster changes, but for whatever reason he chose L.A. That left the coaching market for experienced "hold players accountable" coaches which they publicly said they were looking for, pretty bleak. Then out of the blue it seems Mike Babcock's name came up and talk of Zack Hyman being supportive of him. I wonder if it could have been Zack that even came up with the idea really. With the limited time and limited options, it appears the Oilers decided to run with it, while holding their breath that the league would authorize the decision. An investigation was made about the details of Babcock's short time and firing in Columbus and after a fair amount of time the N.H.L allowed him to go through the process with Edmonton. McDavid and Draisaitl got beind the decision and walla here we are. It all seems very reactionary and wreaks of desperation to be honest.  

I have more to say about this in the live show I did this morning but the more I have pondered this situation and after getting this info and take from Mark Messier I have to say. This decision could end up being a terrible mistake