It took some waiting, namely because of an NHL investigation that had to conclude, but it was finally announced on Tuesday that the Edmonton Oilers have hired Mike Babcock to be their next Head Coach. Babcock has not coached in the NHL since November of 2019 when he was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs, has 700 career wins, and he won a Stanley Cup with the 2008 Detroit Red Wings.

What Edmonton Gets

There is no shortage of criticism for Babcock off the ice. There was the instance where he asked Mitch Marner to rank his teammates' work ethic and then shared those thoughts with the very same teammates, numerous former Babcock-coached players deriding his verbal assaults against them and their teammates, and then the phone-searching incident that resulted in his firing by the Columbus Blue Jackets before he had coached a single game for the team. I do not know Babcock whatsoever off the ice, but if there are issues between Babcock and Edmonton's stars like Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, there's not much hope here.

Setting aside whatever the issues are away from the ice surface, he generally helped his teams push the pace offensively while limiting the damage defensively. The chart below, from HockeyViz, shows how the Maple Leafs fared in 2018-19, Babcock's most recent full year in the NHL. The black box that says 'always' being in the top-right means Babcock helped his team create more expected goals offensively while limiting expected goals against defensively:

There is no need to inundate with same charts for prior seasons because they tell a similar story. Former Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch had similar success in his first couple of years with the team, as the Oilers ranked 1^st by expected goals-for at 5-on-5 and 10^th by expected goals against (per Evolving Hockey), but things declined substantially at both ends of the ice in 2025-26 as they were 8^th by expected goals-for and 14^th by expected goals against.

Even in a down 2025-26 season, McDavid led the league with 138 points, finishing third in goals, while Draisaitl's points per game pace (1.49) was identical to the year before. Evan Bouchard had a career year with 21 goals and 95 points. Babcock will be hard-pressed to have a meaningful, positive offensive impact on their fantasy value, so any real improvements will come from depth options like Matthew Savoie or Jake Walman.

What Babcock can hopefully do is make the team a good defensive group. Whether he can do that remains to be seen, and we'll have to keep an eye on what the team does with Darnell Nurse, but Babcock's biggest impact for fantasy managers is unlikely to be anything on offence, and more on what he can do for the team defensively, and thus their goaltenders. The Oilers were 25^th by goals against per 60 minutes last season, worse than teams like the Seattle Kraken and Detroit Red Wings. If there is any real upswing in the fantasy value for notable fantasy players from Edmonton's roster, it will be for whomever is in net between Tristan Jarry and Connor Ingram (provided they sign Ingram and provided they don't go looking for another starting goalie).