Mike Babcock is back in the NHL as the Oilers and four other teams make coaching changes

Mike Babcock last coached an NHL game in November 2019. His biggest accomplishments in the sport so far were guiding Canada to gold at the Olympics in 2010 and 2014 and the Detroit Red Wings to the Stanley Cup in 2008.

All these years later, the Edmonton Oilers are turning to Babcock to be the person to get Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl the championship that has eluded two of the best hockey players in the world for more than a decade.

Babcock, 63, is back in the league three years since taking over the Columbus Blue Jackets and resigning before training camp when his requests for personal photos from players in a bonding effort drew criticism as too invasive. He is old school, and that is what the Oilers wanted.

“He’s bringing experience and accountability," Oilers CEO of hockey operations Jeff Jackson said this summer. “That’s what we wanted on the organizational management side, and that’s what our players wanted -- our leadership group — so it all aligned."

Edmonton is among the Cup favorites largely because of McDavid and Draisaitl. After reaching the final in 2024 and ‘25, losing to Florida each time, getting knocked out in the first round of the playoffs this past spring spelled the end of Kris Knobaluch’s time behind the bench.

Knoblauch is calm and steadfast and got the ship going in the right direction when he replaced Jay Woodcroft in November 2023. But it was his first job in the NHL, and Babcock has tons of experience with 700 regular season wins and 90 more in the playoffs. Sidney Crosby, who played for Babcock for those back-to-back Olympic championships, recalled an organized coach who knew what he was doing.

“He was really good at kind of painting a clear picture of how he wanted us to play, what guys’ jobs were,” Crosby said. “Really good bench management when it came to matching lines and just a feel for if certain lines were going or certain guys were going: putting the right guys together, timeouts, just feel for the game.”

Babcock is one of five new coaches this season.

Like the Oilers, Pacific Division rival Los Angeles turned to a Cup-winning coach with deep experience in Peter Laviolette. Los Angeles is his seventh NHL organization two decades since he won it all with Carolina.

Getting another chance “says a lot about Lavy,” according to Nashville's Filip Forsberg, who played for Laviolette for six seasons from 2014-20, a stretch that included reaching the final in 2017.

“We had a lot of shenanigans off the ice to kind of keep the guys excited," Forsberg said, citing Laviolette hosting the Predators' annual poker tournament. “I loved him — just the way he can inspire people."

The Kings have made the playoffs five years in a row and lost in the first round each time. Laviolette is one of just four coaches in league history to make the final with three teams.

“We got a lot of veteran guys who’ve gone deep, who have won,” forward Quinton Byfield said. “They know what’s needed to make the next step, so I feel like there’s a lot there for us to be a threat.”

The Golden Knights fired Bruce Cassidy with seven games left last season and put John Tortorella in charge. They went on a run to the final before losing to Carolina, then announced Tortorella would not return.

Vegas promoted Ryan Craig from Henderson of the American Hockey League after three years coaching there. Craig was a Golden Knights assistant from their inaugural season in 2017-18 through their Stanley Cup championship in 2023.

"Unbelievable human being, super high character, really good communicator,” center Jack Eichel said. “I know he’s going to get the most out of our team, and it’s a well-deserved opportunity for him.”

Hiller was an assistant on Babcock's staff with the Maple Leafs from 2015-19 and coached the Kings from when he was a midseason replacement for Todd McLellan in '24 until being fired in March. New Toronto general manager John Chayka tabbed him as the successor to Craig Berube in what may have been the most surprising coaching hire of this cycle.

Familiarity may be his biggest strength, given that camps are shorter this year.

“Any time you have a little bit of continuity, it gets you past some of that kind of get-to-know-you phase,” said John Tavares, who has been with the Leafs since 2018. “For the few of us that have had him in the past, it kind of gets us off and running right off the get-go and get a good feel for who he is as a person and how he thinks and how approaches things.”

Adam Foote lasted just one season as coach of the Canucks, who finished last in the NHL. The rebuilt front office with general manager Ryan Johnson assisted by Daniel and Henrik Sedin promoted Manny Malhotra from the AHL's Abbotsford Canucks after he was in the running a year ago when Foote got the job.

Malhotra brings with him a work ethic that sustained him through a lengthy playing career and is a new voice for a young group looking to start getting better.

“There’s no gray area,” winger Brock Boeser said. “There’s black and white of what we’re supposed to do, what we're not supposed to do. I think that will help our team a lot.”

See AP’s full NHL coverage here

Vancouver Canucks' Paul Cotter (47) and head coach Manny Malhotra, left, look on during opening day of the NHL hockey team's training camp in Penticton, British Columbia, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)

Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Jim Hiller, top left, looks on past Gavin McKenna (92), left, and Auston Matthews (34) during second period NHL pre-season hockey action against the Montreal Canadiens in Toronto, on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026. (Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press via AP)

Edmonton Oilers' head coach Mike Babcock gives instruction during the NHL hockey team's training camp in Edmonton, Alberta, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP)

Edmonton Oilers head Coach Mike Babcock gives instruction during the NHL hockey team's training camp in Edmonton, Alberta, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding thousands of detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice.

ICE removed those detainees from its online detainee locator system on Sept. 15, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the change. Several lawyers contacted by The Associated Press confirmed their clients vanished from the system this week, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association warned its members about the situation Friday.

The move represents a stark departure from previous practice and highlights the hardline nature of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, leaving thousands of detainees exceedingly hard to trace and potentially unable to exercise all of their legal options.

The practice, which applies to detainees who have received final orders of removal from an immigration court, could speed deportations by making last-minute legal challenges harder to pursue, immigration lawyers said. Nearly 16,000 people who were arrested and booked into ICE detention in July were subject to final removal orders, more than a third of the overall bookings, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA.

The practice does not apply to detainees held at a detention facility in Adelanto, California or at temporary holding facilities in Minneapolis, New York City or suburban Chicago, the sources said. Judges have ordered ICE to list detainees in those facilities in the online locator promptly upon their arrival, as part of litigation over their detention practices.

The effort to hide their locations adds to the ways in which the Trump administration has made life harder for detainees and their families as it has increased pressure on them to waive appeals and agree to deportation.

ICE did not publicize the move and in a statement issued to the AP, the agency did not confirm or deny it. The statement said detainees with final removal orders were being prioritized for deportation, even as ICE faces a “historic number of injunctions” from courts stopping individual removals.

As a result of the change, lawyers and relatives lost track of their clients and loved ones without explanation, which is especially concerning because detainees are frequently moved to new facilities before deportation, said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be,” he said. “On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications about how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.”

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, has argued that people who are subject to final removal orders have received due process. That usually means an immigration judge has ordered their removal after a hearing, including cases when immigrants fail to show up, and the decision was affirmed on appeal or not appealed.

Still, those detainees have options to challenge their detention and removal, including seeking to reopen the case or by bringing what’s known as a habeas petition asking a judge to release them on constitutional grounds. Federal judges have granted thousands of rulings ordering that detainees be released or granted bond hearings.

ICE detention facilities held more than 65,000 people as of early July, the most recent available data. Around 30% of them likely have final removal orders, said Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project.

More people have been issued final removal orders after failing to show up for hearings in recent months because the administration's immigration courts have taken steps to make it harder to participate and to reopen such cases, she said.

“To me, it’s just another iteration of disappearing people,” she said. “Why would we do that in the United States of America? It’s something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process.”

Some with final removal orders also have legal protections against deportation to their countries of origin based on the likelihood they would be tortured or persecuted. Many of them are facing removal to third-party countries where they have no ties and their disappearance in ICE's system will make legal challenges harder, lawyers said.

ICE initiated the online detainee locator system in 2010 to allow relatives, lawyers and the public to search for people in custody. Previously they had to call ICE regional offices or individual facilities to try to track them down.

Many advocates and lawmakers have complained that the system updates too slowly and contains too much inaccurate or missing information, allowing ICE to shield the locations of detainees for days or weeks. Minors, people who have been held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for less than 48 hours, and detainees who are being transported are not in the system, among others.

But the exclusion of detainees with final removal orders has no apparent parallel, several immigration lawyers said. Atenas Burrola Estrada, a deputy program director with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said that “every single one of our clients who has a final order has disappeared from the locator,” including 17 in all as of Monday.

Among those disappeared from the locator system are eight Somali men being detained at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to one of their attorneys, My Khanh Ngo, of the American Civil Liberties Union. She said the change could make it “nearly impossible” for people to challenge their removals in some cases.

“If you can't find your client, don't know what's happening to your client, you can't get that information to the court to stop their removal,” she said.

FILE - An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer's badge is visible during an ICE hiring fair, Aug. 26, 2025, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)