By making players show him their phone photos, Mike Babcock shows them who’s boss

Open this photo in gallery:

As an NHLer, what a joy it must be to be told that you’re going in for another office visit with coach Mike Babcock.

What fun activities will Babs have on tap for you today? A polygraph? A forensic examination of your tax returns? Or maybe he wants to talk about your relationship with your mother.

Babcock was torched by the Toronto Maple Leafs for his unorthodox approach to motivation. After a few years in the wilderness, he’s worked his way back to the NHL’s outer rim – Columbus. In this world, you can’t keep a good brand name down.

Most people in his situation would tread quietly for a while, but Babcock was not built for soft treading. He must wear steel-toed boots to bed.

The Spittin’ Chiclets podcast – which has become the New York Times of hockey, minus the style guide – reported this week that Babcock has debuted a new team-building exercise.

“He gets to Columbus, and one of the first things he does is he calls in Boone Jenner, the captain of the team, and he says, ‘Let me see the photos in your phone. I want to see the kind of person you are,’ ” according to Chiclets’ lead investigative reporter/swearer Paul Bissonnette.

The fuller version of this claim is that Babcock is bringing Blue Jackets players in one by one, asking them to open up their phones and then casting their photo gallery onto an office television via AirPlay.

A couple of things here – I would rather my boss invite me to a Turkish bath than ask to see what’s in my phone. I would rather run my phone through a wood chipper than show its contents to him or anyone else.

No. 2 – Mike Babcock knows how to use AirPlay?

This story seemed so far out there that only a paranoiac could believe it. So the Blue Jackets confirmed it.

Their version is different in that the players had a great time letting the guy who controls their livelihoods into their private spaces.

“I thought it was a great first meeting and good way for us to start building a relationship,” Jenner said in a statement released by the team. “To have this blown out of proportion is truly disappointing.”

The only words I can see in those two sentences are “first” and “meeting.” This was the first time you ever sat down with the guy? And he asked to see what’s in your phone? And you agreed to that?

You can accuse NHL players of many things, but “free-thinking individualism” is not one of them.

Columbus’s biggest star, Johnny Gaudreau, confirmed the photo story on another podcast: “I wasn’t uncomfortable at all. I was showing him pictures of my family.”

It’s great for Johnny Gaudreau if his phone is filled with pix of him and his Aunt Cathy at Thanksgiving. I feel safe in assuming that is not the case for many twentysomething multimillionaires who spend their off-seasons in Las Vegas.

I can imagine how this would go with one of them – “Photos? Um. All right. I guess that’s okay. Okay, here’s a good one. This is my dog. And another one of my dog. Dog again. More dog. More … oh no, oh nonono, let’s just scroll through that. Quickly, quickly. Scroll, scroll, scroll. And the dog again.”

Cathal Kelly: Guerrero on knife edge of success or failure, depending on the Jays’ playoff push

If the idea was to build a connection, what happened to an old-fashioned conversation?

Maybe Babcock and his guys can do one of those intimacy exercises they do on BuzzFeed that tells you if you and your partner should get married. Again – that’s another thing I would rather do with Mike Babcock than show him a photo of that spot on my neck I’m trying to figure out if I should be worried about.

Surely, one guy on the Columbus Blue Jackets didn’t just roll over the minute he was asked to do so. Probably a Swede.

If that guy exists – or better yet, one who said, “I’ll show you my photos if you show me all your texts” – he hasn’t said anything yet. As far as we know, everyone went along with it. Everyone’s convinced themselves it was a totally normal, fun thing to do. And as a result, everyone now understands their place in the hierarchy.

The coach asks you to do things and you do them. Even the things that make you feel strange. The most resistance you’re willing to put up is firing off a note to Paul Bissonnette. Maybe he’ll fight your fights for you.

It’s a wonderful insight into group dynamics in martial organizations. The commander’s job is to break down your resistance. Your job is to convince yourself you enjoy being put in your place. We’re all one big, bizarre family looking at pictures of my girlfriend in a swimsuit in Tulum.

The winner here is Babcock. Four years ago, he was cancelled because he was too controlling. Now, as soon as he’s back, we hear the most whackadoodle example of that controlling tendency, and what does everyone do? They shrug their shoulders. They say they kind of liked it. PR double-jeopardy now applies – no one on Columbus can accuse Babcock of that going forward. They just had their shot.

People talk about tactics in hockey like they’re discussing Napoleon, but this is what the real stuff looks like.

Babcock took his biggest professional weakness and turned the situation so that the players are the ones refuting its validity. You say Mike Babcock’s a bully? The biggest names on the Columbus Blue Jackets just got bullied by him and they say different.

That’s not hockey smart. That’s Machiavelli smart.