His way or the highway

Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench
by Mike Keenan, with Scott Morrison

Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024
$36.00 / 9780735281851

Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop

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With his replacement of Rick Tocchet as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, Adam Foote becomes the twenty-second bench boss in the club’s fifty-five year history—the seventh since 2013. Canucks Nation is holding its collective breath wondering how effective he will be, as a National Hockey League rookie coach, in turning around this team’s fortunes.

Whatever he does, fans can rest assured that the “Footy” regime is unlikely to be as chaotic, divisive, or ultimately destructive as the Mike Keenan era (1997-99) was for the Canucks.

Keenan himself recalls that episode, and the rest of his turbulent coaching career, with refreshing candour in this plain-spoken, self-serving memoir. Iron Mike provides an insider’s view of the coaching life aimed at vindicating its author’s brutal winning philosophy and intimidating style. Keenan’s out to settle a few scores, but he also wants us to know that, deep down, he’s a much nicer guy than the tyrant who crashed and burned his way through head coaching gigs in eight different cities before wearing out his NHL welcome.

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Keenan’s tenure as Canucks coach ended more than a quarter century ago, but Vancouver fans still haven’t forgiven him for taking a struggling team and making it even worse. Of course, the man himself doesn’t see it that way: Keenan describes his firing after only fourteen “curious” months as “bush league.” Some might argue that those words also apply to the circumstances of his hiring and his conduct once he began coaching the Canucks.

A few months before Keenan’s arrival, the team’s new American owner, John McCaw, went behind general manager Pat Quinn’s back and invited Mark Messier and his agent to his private yacht. There they agreed to a three-year, $18-million contract. After the Canucks went 3-10-2 to start the 1997-98 season, and Quinn was fired along with coach Tom Renney, Messier told McCaw that he wanted Keenan as the new coach. McCaw, inviting Keenan out to dinner, asked him how much money he wanted and how long a term.

Recalls Keenan: “That was the first time—and thank you, Mess—I was ever in a negotiation where the owner asked me to tell him what I wanted. He basically said, ‘I have to pay you because I’ve already told Mark you’re going to coach.’”

“Thank you, Mess,” indeed. Much ink has been spilled about the sadistic punishment McCaw inflicted on the Canucks and their frustrated fans by so empowering the two men most responsible for Vancouver’s devastating loss to the New York Rangers in the 1994 Stanley Cup final. Nothing we’re told here by Keenan (or by Messier, in his mercifully brief but gushing foreword) is likely to change anyone’s mind about the wisdom of that decision.

The Canucks chapter, which appears in chronological order of all his coaching stops, reminds us of “Iron Mike”’s two biggest flaws: failure to contain his ego, and over-eagerness to add the general manager’s work to his own. Such tandem responsibility is a two-headed monster the NHL fraternity has since abandoned as a management model, thanks to the concentration of power in one individual that Keenan wielded with wrecking ball impact.

Although never formerly offered the GM’s position in Vancouver, Keenan had a say in player transactions. In gratitude to Messier, he extended this same courtesy to the six-time Cup champion. What could possibly go wrong—apart from alienating most of the team still loyal to Trevor Linden, who had handed the captaincy to Messier? Keenan dealt with this problem by trading Linden, but only after berating and humiliating him in front of his teammates with an obscenity-laced tirade.

“The second issue was that most of this group was too comfortable,” the coach recalls. “They were not in good shape compared to elite NHLers and in terms of the levels I demanded for my teams. And the atmosphere was far too relaxed, like they were still living off the accomplishment of losing in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final a few years earlier.” Ouch!

As with his other NHL gigs that ended badly, there are sour grapes about his firing from the Canucks by new general manager Brian Burke. Responding to his adversary’s memoir, Burke’s Law: A Life in Hockey, Keenan blames him for not having had the guts to fire him directly. He does not address Burke’s description of him as “a chameleon who thrives on conflict,” a manipulator who manages a team by “picking out a couple of guys and bullying them,” and a ticking time bomb who “eventually self-destructs by tearing the dressing room apart.”

Iron Mike recalls another story involving the Canucks: Vancouver could have been Keenan’s first NHL coaching gig, instead of his fifth. During the summer of 1984, the team’s original owners, the Griffiths family, interviewed him to replace Roger Neilson, who they’d just fired. But they decided to go with Bill LaForge instead. Keenan ended up signing with the Philadelphia Flyers, who he would coach to two Stanley Cup finals within three years; the hapless LaForge, who lasted only twenty games before the Canucks fired him, never coached in the NHL again.

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Recalling his long journey through the hockey world, Keenan is good-humoured about his bad reputation. Self-esteem has never been a problem. “My first season in organized hockey in Oshawa, at the age of seven and playing against kids two years older than me, I was named the most valuable player,” he recalls. “I once scored 16 goals on 16 shifts, if I remember correctly, and the coach benched me, saying I had embarrassed everyone. I had a confident personality.”

The first four chapters chronicling Keenan’s transition from player to coach reveal the connections he made and the mentors who influenced him along the way. These included Tom Watt, who would precede Keenan into NHL coaching and whom Keenan recommends for Hall of Fame induction, the late Neilson, and the great Scotty Bowman.

The chapters on his NHL coaching gigs over twenty-five years remind us how the league’s perception of his methods evolved along with the game itself. In Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York—teams he coached to Stanley Cup finals, winning only with the Rangers—his tough-love style of riding certain players to the point of exhaustion produced results that won him accolades. But the ’94 Cup win changed him.

From that point on, his every NHL job—from the Rangers to St. Louis, Vancouver, Boston, Florida, and Calgary, respectively—ended in acrimony due to personality conflicts with ownership or management, unpaid bonuses or other money issues, and player complaints about his favouritism, bullying, and mind games. Keenan is frank in recalling these conflicts and grateful to those who have defended him—including players like Jeremy Roenick who, at his own Hall of Fame induction ceremony, credited Keenan with saving his career.

For many fans, “Iron Mike”’s finest hour came at the helm of Team Canada in the 1987 Canada Cup, which ended with an electrifying three-game final against the Soviet Union. Keenan’s account of Game Three—especially on his strategic deployment of two of the world’s greatest players—is enlightening. With 1:36 remaining in regulation time, the series and score both tied, Keenan put out Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux for a defensive zone faceoff taken by Dale Hawerchuk, despite these three never having played on the same line.

“Putting out all that offensive talent in the defensive zone isn’t something a lot of coaches would do,” he recalls, “but I was coaching to win, not survive that shift and make it into overtime. Tikhonov rode four lines and [the Russians] had their fourth line out.” As he predicted on a hunch, Hawerchuk won the faceoff and Gretzky led a charge down the ice that ended with Lemieux scoring the unforgettable game- and series-winning goal.

Later chapters reveal a more reflective Keenan, somewhat chastened by the fallout of his relentless coaching ambitions. Despite his departure from the NHL to coach in the Russian KHL, there was at least one more proud moment: becoming the first coach to win both a Stanley Cup and, twenty years later, a Gagarin Cup. Despite two failed marriages, he is in love again and—at the age of seventy-five—has the undying adoration of his daughter and large extended family.

Regrets? He’s had a few. But reading Iron Mike, one gets the sense that he wouldn’t have done anything differently.

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Daniel Gawthrop is the author of the novel Double Karma (Cormorant) and five non-fiction titles including The Rice Queen Diaries (Arsenal Pulp Press). Visit his Substack here and website here. [Editor’s note: Among several other titles, Daniel Gawthrop has previously reviewed hockey books by Ed Willes, Chad Soon and George Chiang, Corey Hirsch, and Cheryl A. MacDonald & Jonathon R.J. Edwards for The British Columbia Review. He is a co-founder of the Cutting Edges, Vancouver’s LGBTQ+ hockey association, where he still plays left-wing.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster