MUNICH — Before the Edmonton Oilers made the risky decision to hire Mike Babcock as their head coach this summer, the team’s best players sat down with Babcock for a no-holds-barred conversation that effectively sealed the deal.No topics were off-limits, according to Oilers superstar Leon Draisaitl, and there was plenty to discuss given Babcock’s lengthy absence from an NHL bench amid a growing list of allegations he mistreated players, not to mention a brief stay with the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2023 that ended before he even had a chance to run a practice.“We asked all of the hard questions that media would probably ask him, too,” Draisaitl told The Athletic during the NHL’s European Player Media Tour. “He had some very honest feedback on us, too. It was a very honest, productive meeting, and it was very on the table. There was no beating around the bush.“He faced it great. It’s not easy sometimes talking about all of these things.”Draisaitl said it didn’t take much time for Babcock to earn an endorsement from the team’s leadership group during that meeting.About to enter his 13th season in Edmonton, Draisaitl knows all too well the lengths the organization has gone to try to claim another Stanley Cup. But they never had this. An ultra-demanding, ultra-competitive head coach who will dramatically shift the tone and won’t shy away from challenging Draisaitl, Connor McDavid or anyone else wearing Oilers colors.“It was pretty clear pretty quick that he could be our guy,” Draisaitl said. “Just in what he sees, and his attitude towards us — you know, the leaders on the team that want to be coached and that want to be held accountable. I think it’s just what was needed. We had some great meetings with him and then, yeah, it just kind of took off from there.”The risk in this equation is tied to the possibility Babcock again goes too far, the way everyone from Mitch Marner to Johan Franzen to Mike Commodore believe he did in the past.Draisaitl is certainly under no illusions that this will be easy, and in his mind that’s entirely the point.Every coach is going to have strengths and weaknesses, he reasons, and each collection of players needs different things at different times. Kris Knoblauch’s calm and steady demeanor had a profound impact in Edmonton following his hiring in November 2023, with the team reaching back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals in 2024 and 2025. But the Oilers regressed from there, stumbling through last season before losing in Round 1 to the Anaheim Ducks, and that raised the stakes for a team that sees its Cup window narrowing quickly.What came through in the meeting with Babcock is that the stakes are awfully high for him, too. Few would have predicted he’d ever get an opportunity like this one again, and yet here he is at age 63 with a chance to show that the gold medals and championships he won more than a decade ago weren’t just built on coaching methods that couldn’t translate to the next generation.