It was no state secret that a lot of Mike Babcock’s players didn’t love playing for him.



Heck, that was out there after his time in Detroit, and it more or less carried over to Toronto.



But a lot of the complaints you heard – at least as someone adjacent to this Maple Leafs team – were hockey related.



Some players didn’t like their ice time. Some didn’t like that they were scratched or weren’t on special teams or didn’t get to play with so and so. Several hated the system they were being asked to play because of how it stifled creativity. Some didn’t like particularly harsh comments made in the media, either.



And they could all see the disconnect between the coach and the front office, which affected them in the sense that Kyle Dubas or Brendan Shanahan would say one thing about how they were valued by the organization and the coach would say another.



Jason Spezza is just the latest...