Mike Babcock open to coaching Team Canada's Olympic Team for a third time

Detroit Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock has an unparalleled, historic record of success as a head coach in international hockey. Babock coached Team Canada to a gold medal a the 2004 World Hockey Championships, and was at the head of Canada's recent gold medal efforts at the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympic Games. 

Babcock is the only coach in hockey history to have won a world championship, an Olympic gold medal and a Stanley Cup.

On Monday, Babcock discussed his potential interest in coaching Team Canada's Olympic men's team at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeonchang, South Korea. He certainly doesn't sound like a man who is satisfied with what he's already accomplished on the international stage.

"That's a real good question that you can ask me again in three years," Babcock told CBC's Tim Wharnsby about the prospect of coaching at the Olympics for a third time in 2018. "I don't have a clue at this point. I still perceive myself as a young guy. I plan on coaching for a while yet. We'll see what happens."

Continued Babcock: "There are great, great coaches in Canada. If someone else deserves the opportunity, they should get it. If I'm still in the running at that time, we'll see. Only time will tell."

With the benefit of several weeks to digest a second straight gold medal, Babcock also reflected on exactly what his Canadian men's team accomplished in Sochi:

To get a chance to do this once was a thrill of a lifetime. You wonder, 'How can you top that?' Well, this was different because I didn't have my family with me. But it still was an amazing event. In the end, we had an unbelievable group and we did what we set out to do.

I don't know if we ever got untracked. One of the things that turned out to be a positive was that we had trouble scoring. It was our adversity that we needed to overcome, just like the loss to the United States [in the final game of the preliminary round] was our adversity in Vancouver. This time, it was not scoring easily and it made our guys dig in.

We became a well-oiled machine in which everybody did their jobs seamlessly. I was very impressed. We were much more dominant this time.

Babcock's apparent willingness to continue working with the national team stands in stark relief with executive director Steve Yzerman. Yzerman promptly announced that he was stepping down from his role with Hockey Canada, following Canada's gold medal victory over Sweden in late February.