"I can't get a feel in the morning skate in Detroit, either," he said. "Sometimes I think we're the ('76) Canadiens and the puck's going all over and then we don't do anything and sometimes I think our hands look like feet and we get out there and we play great. Now we got to go out, we got a good plan, we got good people, now we got to go out and execute."

And, via RedWingsFeed, the Winnipeg Sun's Ted Wyman reports that Babcock also issued sporting advice of a different kind recently:

A week ago, when they were sitting with a 1-2 record and looking up at the field in the Olympic curling tournament, Brad Jacobs and his teammates drew some inspirational words from someone who knows a thing or two about winning medals.

“When we were 1-2 we talked to Mike Babcock,” Jacobs said. “And he said ‘You’re 1-2, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s how you finish. Just go out there and execute.’ That’s exactly what we’ve done. It was nice to take his advice.”

Babcock, of course, is the men’s hockey coach who guided Canada to the gold medal in Vancouver and has his team in the semifinal again here in Sochi. He’s also won a Stanley Cup and coached Canada to a world championship.

The Jacobs team came into Sochi as Olympic rookies and got off to a rough start, perhaps feeling the pressure of wearing the Maple Leaf, perhaps just experiencing big-game jitters.

But since that conversation with Babcock, they’ve been lights out. Their seventh straight win on Wednesday propelled them into the gold-medal game on Friday against Great Britain.