Sunshine in Sunrise

It's good to see that ol' hellcat Mike Keenan was hired to coach the Panthers this week. It sure livens things up in the lukewarm Southeast, doesn't it?

Sunrise is Keenan's seventh stop in an 18-year NHL career that's littered with victories and burnt bridges and he deserves another chance after doing a solid job in Boston last year. Keenan led the injury-weakened Bruins to a .547 winning percentage and within a point of a playoff berth (remember, this was before the B's offseason free-agent spending spree) but management decided they didn't like his visceral style and let him go.

That's one thing about Keenan, love him or hate him -- and you'll find people to vote either way -- he has a style. There's an intensity about him and a tendency toward the dramatic. Molehills swell to mountains when Keenan's around.

Another thing about Keenan is that he's a winner, which is something Florida desperately needed. "I want one of these," said Panthers' CEO Alan Cohen, lifting up Keenan's Stanley Cup ring at the press conference announcing the hiring. Keenan's ring is from 1994 and says "Rangers" on it.

The first time I ever spoke to Keenan was in 1995 and I was in my pajamas. It must have been 7 a.m. or so, and I was a young, single guy in New York, which meant that 7 a.m. was only a few hours after my bed time. I'd put in a call to Keenan because I was fact-checking Gary Smith's epic Sports Illustrated story about him. Now he was phoning me back. "You up?" Keenan asked. "Let's do this now."

Keenan, of course, had been awake for hours, which fit into his image as a workaholic. I'd already heard a lot of the horror stories by then -- of how he would intimidate young hockey players until they were to the point of tears. One ex-NHLer told me about the time he'd played a lackluster game and Keenan, seething, had summoned him into a windowless room, shut the door, picked up a hockey stick and used the butt end to flip the light switch to black. "Then he kept me in there and let me hear him breathe," the player told me. "I just curled up in a ball and waited. After a long while he put the light on and let me go. I tell you what: I didn't take another night off under Mike."

Keenan and I got along well that first conversation and what impressed me most were his confidence and candidness. I had to ask him a lot of sticky stuff -- personal things about his wife included -- and he handled it first rate. He knew I had a job to do. We talked for more than an hour, and not just about hockey, but about things we'd done in college and books we'd read and other stuff, too.

Then there was the time a couple of years ago when I wrote an SI column that pointed out, matter-of-factly, the abysmal combined record of 51-71-19 that Keenan had in his last season with the Blues in 1996-97 and his two seasons with the Canucks ('97-98 and '98-99). The day the article hit the newsstands, the phone rang in my office "You're a f---er!" barked the voice on the other end.

"Mike Keenan?" I said. "Is that you?"

The bottom line is that despite a few hiccups, you have to like Keenan as a coach. The guy has coached four teams to winning percentages of .635 or better. Even his failings have an upside: It was his tenure that put Vancouver on path for its solid season last year, and it was Keenan who imported many of the core players that have made the Blues a Western Conference power in recent years.

Having Keenan back in the NHL makes the league more interesting and means that the Panthers (6-15-2-3 and the league's worst team outside of Atlanta) have a pulse. One word to Cohen and the rest of Florida's higher-ups: Give Keenan a little time. Right now he's inheriting a team that revolves around Pavel Bure, which is a bit like a ringmaster planning a circus around the trapeze artists. Keenan will need to bring in a few lions to get his show humming, and he'll need time to sharpen the act at its edges. How long, one wonders, before he pries fourth-line winger Stephane Matteau from the Sharks?

There will be some outbursts in Florida and a nasty clash or three and certainly some ruts along the way. Sooner or later, though, Keenan will get this team skating in straight lines and winning some games, and, knowing him, he'll still be calling people when they're in their pajamas.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy covers the NHL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. "Seen and Heard" will appear Tuesdays throughout the NHL season. To send a question to his Mailbag, click here.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

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