TORONTO – Mike Babcock is waiting for the right moment to wear his lucky McGill tie behind the Toronto Maple Leafs bench.

You might think Saturday’s visit to the Bell Centre would present a perfect opportunity to break it out for the first time since coming to Toronto – what, with the Leafs having lost 14 straight games to the Montreal Canadiens. But those aren’t big enough stakes for the cerebral head coach.

“I wore it in two Olympics and one World Cup,” he said. “When we ever get a big game around here I might bring it out. But we’ve got a lot of work to do to get in a big game.”

Babcock, however, won’t let this trip to Montreal pass without a nod to his alma matter. He’s scheduled to drop the puck at McConnell Arena before Friday’s homecoming game against Concordia.

Hockey’s highest-paid coach will never be accused of forgetting where he came from.

A graduate of McGill’s physical education program in 1986, and former captain of the Redmen hockey team, Babcock has made frequent visits to campus in the years since. He was awarded an honourary doctorate of laws by the university in 2013.

To hear him tell it today, he might never have become a Stanley Cup champion or coached Team Canada to two Olympic gold medals, were it not for the years spent at McGill. He arrived there at age 20 as an average student and discovered the focus that has propelled him to incredible professional heights.

“When I went there I was just a guy going to play hockey and I didn’t know anything about going to school or what I’d do with my life that way,” said Babcock. “My parents obviously were great, but I met (a professor) named John Chomay and he kind of looked after me. Then I suddenly became a student and that opened up a whole lot of things in my life that I didn’t know existed, for me.

“I am forever indebted for my time at McGill, I think it’s a fantastic school.”

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Babcock brings a teacher’s sensibility to his job as coach. He tends to break things down to the simplest form when explaining everything from Frederik Andersen’s slow start to his team’s early-season penalty troubles to how he handles a rotating cast of healthy scratches.

“We meet with them on a regular basis to talk about their game,” Babcock explained. “We show them the clips so they understand. We try to talk to them on a regular basis so they understand their situation, and work with them daily.”

Even after a 3-0 start to the season, he was highly critical of his players following a 6-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday night. There is no room to get satisfied in Babcock’s world.

However, after a day off on Thursday, the coach seemed to be in high spirits upon returning to the practice ice.

“If (the loss is) still bugging you two days later, something’s wrong,” said Babcock. “We didn’t work. That’s on me, I didn’t have the team prepared and ready to go. We were no good in (Wednesday’s) morning skate – I could have zipped them. No matter what we said they didn’t get prepared to engage at a high enough level. We got outchanced 7-3 in the first – and that’s totally unacceptable – and then we got outskated and then we had no battle level.

“So, to me, you’re four games into your season and that can’t happen. The other look is ‘Hey Babs, lighten up, we’re 3-1.’ No. You come to work every day, you be a good pro, and you prepare to be a good pro, and things go your way.

“The league’s too hard to take nights off. We did.”

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On Saturday, the Leafs will feature a different look on the third pairing with Connor Carrick returning to the lineup to play alongside Andreas Borgman. Eric Fehr may also replace Dominic Moore as the fourth-line centre.

Babcock was placing a renewed emphasis on tightening up structurally while downplaying the significance of a long losing streak against the Canadiens.

“(It means) zero for me, but we’re playing them tomorrow and I’m jacked up to have that opportunity,” he said. “Would we like to beat them? Yeah. … Are we due? We’re absolutely due. But I think tomorrow’s game is more important than anything that happened before it. I don’t even know how many of those I’ve been involved in.

“I’ve obviously lost a whole bunch to Montreal since I’ve been here. I must have lost to them (eight) times then, have I? (Eight) straight, holy mackerel. That’d be better – that’d hurt my feelings more – if you said ‘you’re oh-and-(eight).”’