Off the record with Mike Keenan

I love the Roenick/Belfour piece as well as the cheap shot at Brett Hull.  Keenan was a good sport.

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Sutter’s Accomplishment: Making Keenan a Sympathetic Figure

Iain MacIntyre, in the midst of the revisionists’ accounts of what happened the last two seasons in Calgary, hits the nail on the head with his post at The Sporting News.  When Sutter was asked, a couple of years ago, why he brought Keenan to Calgary, Sutter basically scoffed at the question and quipped that all he wanted to know is if Keenan still wanted to coach.

But in May, Darryl fired Keenan after another first-round playoff flop. He then hired little brother Brent, who bolted from New Jersey for the chance to coach closer to his cattle ranch 90 minutes north of Calgary.

The most remarkable thing Darryl Sutter achieved with Keenan was transforming a coaching pariah into a sympathetic figure.

It wasn’t Keenan who had mismanaged the Flames’ salary cap to the point that a spate of late-season injuries, financial restrictions and a 3-6-0 finish cost the team first place in the Northwest.

Sutter has a far better, and much deeper team to work with this time around.  He has four legitimate top-four defensemen, Olli Jokinen for an entire season, and more of the grit that Keenan loves in guys like Nigel Dawes.  Still, this is the beginning of the end for the Sutters.  When you hire your brother, there are generally only two ways out: you both quit, or you both are fired.  My personal hunch is that Keenan will be redeemed by the results of this brotherly situation.

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Something stinks…and I think it’s Sutter B.S.

I’m calling B.S.  Maybe the media won’t, but they are populist, anyway.  Keep in mind that shortly after the Flames burned out in the first round of the playoffs (one could say they burned out toward the end of the regular season, when they were befallen to injury), it was the fans who were the voice of reason.  It was the fans that pointed out that Darryl Sutter was the real issue here, putting his team behind the 8-ball when it came to the salary cap.  It was Darryl Sutter grabbing another high-priced forward at the deadline instead of shoring up the defense he so loves to complain about well after the fact.  It was Darryl Sutter who ignored that he had an entirely unproven backup goaltender on an otherwise (as he believes) Stanley Cup caliber hockey club, yet it’s the same Darryl Sutter who is now complaining that Mikka Kiprusoff played too much (as if Darryl couldn’t have made a “suggestion” to the coach for whom he was the boss).  The fans — yes, the fans have been the ones to point this out.  All the while the media simply worked and worked and worked at getting Mike Keenan fired.  It didn’t work…

…that is until, AHA, very convenient, Brent Sutter went waaaaaaaaaa, waaaaaaaaaaa, crying like a baby and saying he was homesick and missed his family.  Then all of a sudden Keenan (who Darryl was quoted as saying only a year previous, “Mike’s an elite coach.  There are only a handful of them in the league.  Mike’s not going anywhere”) was expendable as a guy who “didn’t get enough” from his star players, played Kiprusoff “way too much,” and didn’t bring about a “defensive philosophy” (when in the world has Mike Keenan ever been the defensive answer to a team’s woes??????).

Darryl and Brent are both full of, quite frankly, B.S.  Yes, with a capital “B” and a capital “S.”  This had nothing to do with Mike Keenan, and everything to do with a) deflecting the blame that Darryl was getting from the fans, yet the media had overlooked to that point and b) a chance to take one last crack at this Flames experiment with their brother.  I can only hope that Calgary will be decimated with injuries come playoff time again so that Darryl can make excuses for his brother.  I can only hope that their lack of a backup goalie kills them so that Kiprusoff has to play the last 40 games just to try to slip into the playoffs.  I can only hope they try to tackle the upcoming season with the poor defensive corps they had (other than Regehr and Phaneuf) so that Darryl and Brent can scratch their heads at their golden defensive philosophy gone wrong.  Lastly, I can only hope that some other team realizes the job Keenan did in Calgary and gives him another chance.  Surely it’ll be someone who realizes that Keenan is not known for his sytematic teaching of the game, nor for his innovative defensive philosophy, but because he’s a winner and because even though the media likes to hint otherwise, just about every one of Keenan’s stops has been as successful or moreso than the person he succeeded as well as the one who succeeded him.

Something stinks…and I know it’s the Sutter brothers and their B.S.

Update: The Bleacher Report is as cynical as I am.

Keep in mind that the Devils’ season ended on April 28th. It took Brent over 40 days to consider his resignation, but only three to jump back in. His deliberation reached a relatively quick end when Mike Keenan was fired on May 23rd.

The dates just don’t add up. He took a very long time to decide about his future (understandable, even though it put the Devils in a very difficult position right before the draft and free agency), then reconsidered only three days later.

Update 2: I am not always a huge fan of Scott Burnside, but I give him credit for being one of the few mainstreamers who gets it:

Last time we checked, the Flames had to play 82 regular-season games, the same as Brent’s old team, the New Jersey Devils. And last time we checked, half of the Flames’ games were on the road, the same number of games away from home as the Devils. And last time we checked our trusty map (not to mention calling colleagues in Calgary), Red Deer, where Brent farms and owns a much-loved junior team, is still about a 90-minute drive from Calgary.

All of which makes us more than a little suspicious of Brent’s motives given that the main reason he waffled on returning to coach the Devils in 2009-10 was that he missed being home and looking after his junior team.

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Regehr didn’t likely end Mike Keenan’s career

Michael Farber writes that Robyn Regehr’s comments about Mike Keenan’s prime being in the 80s and 90s may have effectively ended Keenan’s career. The comments hinged on the fact that Keenan isn’t an Xs and Os guy but trying to make a living in an Xs and Os world.

Keenan has butted heads with players throughout a career that started in the 1984 in Philadelphia — Detroit’s Chris Chelios said last week that Keenan seemed to relish their confrontations in Chicago — but never has he been so calmly and totally damned by a player of Regehr’s stature, one who had no axe to grind.

Admittedly, these are very sharp words.  In fact, they are words that that will not bode well for Regehr as his career continues along.  Whereas these kinds of things can be over-looked in baseball, and even accepted in basketball and football, there is a certain respect left in hockey for the coaches and managers.  There is a brotherhood among NHL coaches, even to the point of having the brother of the firer defend the firee (see Brent Sutter’s comments about Mike Keenan).  General managers and coaches across the league will take note of such a comment and, as good of a defenseman as Regehr is, if a decision boils down to a coin flip, this will be the reason Regehr finds himself on the outside looking in.  I digress.

The problem with this idea is that there are a ton of Xs and Os guys in the coaching world.  There are Xs and Os guys in the TV booth.  There are Xs and Os guys at home, on the couch, watching the Xs and Os guys on TV and behind the bench.  There are not a lot of good motivators — guys who can still get it done.  There are not a lot of guys who can make a very good team great.  Mike Keenan has done that, he can do it again, and that’s why there will always be a demand for Mike Keenan.

It wasn’t that long ago that NHL teams were wooing Scotty Bowman and looking for his services as a coach (as well as a GM).  Scotty Bowman was notorious for not even being on the ice at practices.  Keenan has built himself in this image, and he has never been regarded as a great tactician in terms of the on-ice systems.  Rather, he has been a great manager of the bench — something so difficult for a coach to achieve, yet something that never goes away.

Every year only one team gets to win the Stanley Cup.  Along with that, there are always 5 or 6 teams that feel they were “right there.”  Those are the teams to look for as possibilities for Keenan’s next stop.  He’s only going to be there for 2-3 years, anyway, and there’s no reason he can’t grab one of those Xs and Os guys from another bench, a TV studio, or a couch near you.  If anyone’s career was hurt by those comments, it was Robyn Regehr’s.

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Keenan fired because Kiprusoff was bad

Jonathan Willis points out that even if Kiprusoff had just been average, Keenan would not have been fireable.

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“He’s an elite coach”

Roughly one year ago…

General manager Darryl Sutter, who coached the team to the Stanley Cup final in 2004, did not second-guess Keenan’s decision to give Kiprusoff the hook.

“He’s an elite coach and there’s only a handful of them,” Sutter said. “He’s our coach absolutely.”

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Sutter had no problem with Keenan

If you listened to the presser today, here’s what Sutter said about Keenan:

-He had two good regular seasons

-They did well in last year’s playoffs to hang with San Jose

-The decision to fire him was not based on this year’s playoff performance

Um…so what was it based on?  Sutter getting bored?

It was very strange — listen to the press conference if you get a chance (I’m sure Fan960 will podcast it and flames.nhl.com will make it available for streaming).

Update: Here’s the link to the afternoon press conference.

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Sutter tying his own noose

Mike Keenan was finally fired yesterday, and the popular opinion seems to place no more than half of the blame on the former Flames coach.  Keenan was dealt the difficult hand of finishing off the season with less than a full roster, incurring many injuries in the process, and playing out a playoff schedule without his top defenseman, a couple other of his top 6, and a goalie who didn’t get much rest due to the attempt to secure the 3-seed in the West (which they would have handily won with a full complement of players).  What does this mean?  In terms of Sutter, it means that he’s going to have to start using a mirror.

What this dismissal does is heap even more scrutiny on Darryl Sutter and his blueprint. He recycled Keenan, an old-school cage-rattler who hadn’t won a playoff round since 1996, to the astonishment of many. He assembled this group; built it in his image. He’s told everyone, again and again, that it was fully capable of a long spring run.

And yet, here they are, facing a fourth coaching change in the past five seasons.

For the Calgary Flames, it all depends on who comes in next.  One thing you know for certain when you play a Mike Keenan team — it ain’t going to be easy.  In a division like the Northwest, you better be ready to hire someone in that mold or you’ll find yourself in the same place as Tony Granato’s Colorado Avalanche (with a team posessing nearly as much talent as any other team in the division).

For Mike Keenan, I think he will get another shot if he wants to do this.  It may not be for several years, but he did his image a favor in Calgary.  He managed to keep the peace in the locker room, he won the favor of his important veterans (even Kiprusoff), and he only resorted to the most challenging tactics at critical times…and they typically were successful.

The loss, last year, to San Jose in the 7-game series was a case of Keenan’s team playing way above their talent level.  This year they had the talent on the roster to win the Cup, but much of that talent was laid up in the trainer’s room.  Much of that talent fell out of contention when Sutter put the club in a poor position of suiting up 15 players at the end of the year, a time when you want to roll four lines and get everyone in playoff shape.

This wasn’t a coaching problem.  This wasn’t exactly a popular move made for the fans.  This was likely a last-ditch effort for Darryl Sutter to bring another brother into the Calgary mix before he is smoked out of town.  That smoke seems to be rising by the day.

Update: Sutter’s predecessor says Sutter deserves plenty of the blame:

“With this core of players, they have flamed out in the playoffs four consecutive years in the first round. I would suggest some of the issues they are facing are not going to go away with the coach.

I think (Keenan is being asked to take) full responsibility where he doesn’t deserve full responsibility.”

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LOL.

• Craig Conroy would no only like to see Mike Keenan return for the Calgary Flames, but be a little harder on the players. Other Craig Conroy likes: Paper cuts, fire ant bites and dropping car batteries on one’s toes. [Sun Media]

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Conroy: Bring Keenan back

Craig Conroy is the first of the players to speak out in more depth about his wishes for next year’s bench boss of the Calgary Flames:

“Mike’s got a good pulse for the team — when we need days off, when we need to do things and he’s approachable to talk to if there is a problem,” said the 37-year-old, who says that wasn’t necessarily the case when Keenan coached him in St. Louis in 1997, which is part of what makes the public backing of the once-feared coach all the more interesting.

Conroy has stated that Keenan probably wasn’t hard enough on his team when he should have been, last year, and that he hopes Keenan comes in with more of a hammer this season.

As the article points out, it’s not like many people are going to step out and say they hope that the coach is fired.  At the same time, a player who feels that way isn’t obligated to say anything.  Conroy clearly wants his familiar coach back with the team next year, with a few tweaks.

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