I rarely venture to Victoria, but hockey brought me here.
I thought Keenan’s speciality was to instill discipline into underachieving but talented teams. Flyers, Blackhawks, Rangers.
He ran into serious problems with the Blues and Canucks because they quickly tuned him out. He dismantled the team and reassembled another team, but when they tuned him out then he was doomed again. Also Keenan didn’t have the “assets” from the Bure trade yet. No Jovanksi yet. Keenan did inherit a very dysfunctual Vancouver team.
The Bruins missed the playoff his first (and only year) and it was quite comical, but highly believable, the story of the players passing the hat around the locker room to raise money for the Keenan payout. The players went to the General Manager dropped a hat full of cash onto the GM’s desk. GM asks “what the crap is that!” Players answered, “we’ll buy Keenan (Hitler) out.” GM says, “oh…” And Keenan was finished.
In Florida, this is the first and only time we’ve seen Keenan try to build a team with mainly young guys. Doesn’t look too promising so far.
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“Keenan was abrasive but he had a great eye for talent.
Keenan was largely responsible for the growth of Markus Naslund. He also traded for Todd Bertuzzi. Keenan's downfall was his loyalty to Messier.”
Keenan did make the then controvesial trade of Shanahan for Pronger. At that time people thought he was an idiot but now every GM would rather have a Pronger than a Shanahan.
Actually Bertuzzi was the throw-in, as hard to believe as that it is. The main player was Islander captain, at age 20, Brian McCabe, who is now the Leaf’s number 1 defenceman and probably future captain when Sundin leaves (Roberts can’t be captain, he isn’t getting any younger at 37).
The holdout of Bure did give force Naslund into more playing time; and constant challenging from Keenan did improve Naslund’s consistency and heart to go to the net, instead of hiding 40 feet away.
Keenan did tell everyone that Bertuzzi could be an offensive winger, took him five years to develop consistency.
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Chelios, Roenick, Pronger, all said that they reached their potential because they needed Keenan’s abrasive challenging.
Who knew?