Mike Keenan is noted for his early career success in coaching Team Canada to win the 1987 Canada Cup round-robin tournament in a thrilling best-of-three series finale against Viktor Tikhonov's Red Army team.
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21 Facts About Mike Keenan
2.
Mike Keenan won a Stanley Cup championship as coach of the New York Rangers in 1994.
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3.
Mike Keenan won the Gagarin Cup while coaching Metallurg Magnitogorsk in 2014, and he is the only head coach to have won championships in both the NHL and KHL.
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5.
Mike Keenan returned to the University of Toronto to lead it to the CIAU title.
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6.
Mike Keenan then landed his first high-profile job with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1984.
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7.
Mike Keenan was followed in this feat in 2009 by Mike Babcock of the Detroit Red Wings.
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8.
In winning the 1994 Stanley Cup, Mike Keenan managed to avoid becoming the first coach in NHL history to lose Game 7s with two teams .
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9.
Mike Keenan's tough coaching style and attitude towards his players have earned him the nickname "Iron Mike".
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11.
In winning the team's first Gagarin Cup, Mike Keenan became both the first North American coach to win a KHL championship and the first coach to win both the Gagarin Cup and the Stanley Cup.
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12.
Mike Keenan's coaching resume includes abrupt terminations or resignations from coaching or general manager positions, sometimes at bafflingly inopportune, or peak, moments of his career.
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13.
Mike Keenan was fired from the Philadelphia Flyers a year after leading them to the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals.
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14.
Mike Keenan managed to coach the Rangers to the Stanley Cup in his first and only year as head coach, but was unable to coexist long enough with general manager Neil Smith and resigned weeks later, citing a violation of his contract by the Rangers.
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15.
Mike Keenan deliberately benched Hawerchuk for the game, and an unhappy captain Brett Hull screamed at Mike Keenan, who then responded by stripping Hull's captaincy.
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16.
Mike Keenan was even willing to publicly criticize Wayne Gretzky after he acquired the superstar in an early 1996 trade with the Los Angeles Kings.
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17.
Mike Keenan had previously coached Gretzky in Canada Cup play, and his refusal to moderate his attitude and style even when coaching a team full of stars meant his relationship with the league's all-time leading scorer was never particularly warm.
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18.
In September 2006, Mike Keenan again attracted headlines when he abruptly resigned as general manager of the Florida Panthers.
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19.
Mike Keenan's resignation came shortly after he dealt Florida Panthers' franchise goaltender Roberto Luongo along with defenceman Lukas Krajicek and Florida's 2006 sixth-round draft pick to the Vancouver Canucks for struggling forward Todd Bertuzzi, goaltender Alex Auld, and defenceman Bryan Allen.
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20.
Mike Keenan was notorious for pulling or switching his goaltenders, sometimes multiple times in a period.
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21.
In 2018, Mike Keenan went public with being diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he is currently undergoing treatment.
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