Odd Man Out

In the coolest sport on earth, autumn is a time of beginnings. The chill in the air carries a subtle thrill, so while the rest of the world is mourning the passing of summer, a hockey man notes the changing leaves and the diminishing daylight with a sense of excitement. The prospect of a new team and a fresh start quickens his pulse and adds pace to his early practices. The sins of the previous year are forgotten. Endless possibilities lie ahead. Frost and gathering darkness be damned: Fall is hockey's season of hope.

Which is why now is the toughest time for Mike Keenan. "It's the first time in 40 years I haven't been at a hockey training camp of some kind," he says. Keenan, 47, has been out of work since being fired last Dec. 19 after 2½ stormy seasons as the St. Louis Blues general manager and coach. Controversial and domineering, Keenan this summer watched in mounting frustration as one NHL coaching position after another, 10 in all, was filled by a less qualified man. After 11½ seasons with four teams, Keenan stands fifth in regular-season NHL wins (470) and fourth in playoff victories (91). Three times he has guided—some would say browbeaten—a team to the best record in hockey. Six times he has won a division title. Four times he has taken a team to the Stanley Cup finals. One time, in 1994, he won the ultimate prize: the Cup, the first for the New York Rangers in 54 years.

Ancient history. Keenan, whose acrimonious exits from the Blues and the Rangers have scared away would-be employers, is on the outside looking in, wondering if he'll be hired again. For him the season of hope has become a season of waiting, of passing the days by doing things that he has never had the time to do. A 10-day vacation in Italy. Accompanying his only child, Gayla, to the University of Michigan to help her enroll as a freshman. Renting out his Florida condominium. Apartment hunting in Boston with his fiancée, Nola McLennan, so she can be closer to her sons, Grant and Reed, who live in Presque Isle, Maine. Painting the modest studio apartment he has rented for himself in Boston's Back Bay. Working out. Jogging along the Charles River. Browsing in the shops on nearby Newbury Street, all the while seething at the injustice of his predicament, stoically waiting for another coach to fail—the average tenure of NHL coaches is less than two years—and a phone call inviting him back to the game.

If there's one thing Keenan is certain of in this time of uncertainty, it's that he can still win. At every level he has coached, he has won: a Junior B championship (Oshawa Legionaires), a minor league championship (Rochester Americans), a collegiate championship (University of Toronto), a Stanley Cup and two Canada Cups (Team Canada). He knows the sacrifice that winning requires. He understands the culture. "I have to have belief in myself, and I hope I can restore my belief in the system," Keenan says. "I still have a passion for the game—I've given most of my life to it—but it gets more difficult every time you're fired. Your self-confidence can be fractured. With age, you feel more vulnerable. I've found it extremely difficult."

"He's very concerned he won't get the opportunity to coach again," says Keenan's agent, Rob Campbell, choosing his words carefully, fearful of further damaging his client's standing in the hockey community. "Given all the coaching changes that were made last summer, to have a man of Mike's talent and profile not in the game is inexplicable. A lot of general managers are fearful of him coming in and dominating them. It's been a sobering experience."

In fact, the reluctance to hire Keenan is easily explicable. Everywhere he has been, he has alienated players and management with his mind games and desire for absolute control. In Philadelphia, where he took an undermanned Flyers team to the Cup finals twice between 1984 and '88, Keenan was so authoritarian that players used to give him Heil Hitler salutes behind his back, and he finally wore the players out.

Same story in Chicago, where Keenan carried the dual role of coach and general manager of the Blackhawks. "Eventually he drove us physically and mentally insane," says former Chicago forward Steve Thomas. Despite pulling off one of the savviest trades in Blackhawks history—acquiring future Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Chelios and a draft choice for an aging Denis Savard—and leading the Hawks to 60 playoff games in four years, Keenan was fired when hands-on owner Bill Wirtz perceived him as thirsting for too much power.

Next stop, New York, where Keenan's Cup-winning year with the Rangers was marred by a seasonlong feud with general manager Neil Smith over the makeup of the team. The enmity built to such proportions that by the time New York won the Cup, Keenan and Smith could hardly stand the sight of each other. Still, it was a shock to adoring Rangers fans when Keenan blew off the final four years of his contract and bolted for St. Louis, where for the first time he was given total control. Keenan claimed that the Rangers had breached his contract by sending out his playoff bonus one day late.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman fined Keenan $100,000 and suspended him for 60 days for the "unseemly spectacle" he had created and then issued a gag order forbidding either side from discussing the settlement, but he allowed Keenan to remain with the Blues. "I left the Rangers because, fundamentally, Neil didn't want me there," Keenan says. "He intentionally breached my contract, but that's in the past, and I want to leave it in the past. There are two sides to every story, and the truth is somewhere in the middle."

The situation in St. Louis followed a similar script. In the strike-shortened 1994-95 season, Keenan's first with the Blues, the team had the league's fourth-best record but was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, and in June the man who had hired Keenan, chairman of the board Michael Shanahan, was fired by the Kiel Center Partners, who ran the club.