Maple Leafs Time Machine: Iron Mike Keenan and the Blue and White
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The most successful NHL coach from Toronto’s backyard would’ve loved to run the Maple Leafs.
But of the eight times Mike Keenan was hired around the league — and as well-known as he was around this town as headmaster of the University of Toronto Blues — just one interview was extended.
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“A very interesting one,” Keenan tells us at the launch of his new book, Iron Mike. “Ken Dryden was the general manager (in the late 1990s) and he was on some kind of athletic committee with Liz Hoffman (Director of Athletics at U of T). I was without work and Liz told Ken ‘you should interview Mike.’
“So, I go to Ken’s place, we get into the process, but I start to realize my answers are getting Ken upset. He’d been asking questions about pulling goalies, which I should’ve known was a sore spot with him.”
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The Hall of Fame stopper and Keenan, known as Captain Hook for pulling his netminders early and often to incur their wrath, weren’t likely to be pals.
“Halfway through the interview I thought ‘I have no chance for this job,’” Keenan said with a laugh. “Maybe Ken was over-sensitive, but he did take the opportunity to talk to me.
“I’d been through U of T, went to grad school in Toronto, taught at Don Mills (Collegiate) and Forest Hill,” the Oshawa-raised Keenan said. “The Leafs would’ve been a nice opportunity. But it never came to fruition.”
Keenan, who ranks 15th in career coaching wins, did have a long beef with Maple Leaf Gardens itself, which lingered to his NHL days. It stemmed from junior games on Carlton Street with Peterborough and the U of T practices his Blues were granted when Varsity Arena was being used by the Continental Basketball League’s Toronto Tornados.
“I’d be running drills thinking ‘something’s not right,’” Keenan said. ‘We’d work on rebounds out of the corners, but the pucks were all coming out strangely. So, I had U of T’s engineering department come down, with all their equipment, to measure the arc of each corner. They were all different.
“Maybe the Leafs coaches picked up on that, but their goalies or defencemen probably knew about it and never told anybody the puck would come out a certain way. They didn’t adjust them at all through the years and it became home-ice advantage for the Leafs for two periods. The opposing goalie is probably seeing it and thinking ‘what the heck?.’
“Maybe Conn Smythe in his haste to get the place built didn’t make the right measurements. But no one really cared (about Keenan’s complaints). As long as the building was full, Harold Ballard was happy. He didn’t care about the arc of the corners.”
Keenan settled for staying a thorn in the Leafs’ side, starting as coach of the Petes against the junior Marlboroughs. In his first NHL job with Philadelphia, a young roster and team with vision compared to the backward Leafs under Ballard, the Flyers were immediate Stanley Cup contenders.
It was Keenan’s Chicago Blackhawks who beat the Leafs in OT on the last day of the 1988-89 schedule to deny them a playoff spot and then in ‘96, Keenan’s St. Louis Blues beat Toronto in the first round.
Most significantly, his ‘94 New York Rangers ended what was the NHL’s longest Cup drought at 54 years, where Toronto’s has now stretched to 57.
ONCE A LEAF
Featuring one of more than 1,100 players, coaches and general managers who have played or worked in Toronto’s 107-year NHL history.
Goalie Ken Wregget
BORN: March 25, 1964 in Brandon, Man.
Years as a Leaf: 1983-89
Stats: GP: 200, W-L-T, 55-112-17, GAA: 4.34, 2 S/O
Playoffs: GP: 25 W-L: 13-11, GAA 2.93
Numbers worn: 30, 31
THEN
It was a baptism of fire, Wregget thrust into 23 games as a rookie and winning just two on a last-place team with a goal differential of minus-105.
“But what an honour to be drafted by Toronto,” the 60-year-old Wregget said from his home in suburban Pittsburgh, where he now owns a sports bar. “You’re suddenly playing in front of 16,000 people. You looked around at the corner bunker with Harold Ballard, King Clancy, there’s Johnny Bower walking around and I’m on the same team as Borje Salming.
“I really didn’t understand the enormity of it until I looked back.”
It wasn’t the greatest of learning environments as the Leafs lagged behind other NHL teams in basics and support staff.
“We were all kids drafted by (general manager) Gerry McNamara. About five of us young as young could be (such as Jim Benning, Russ Courtnall, Gary Leeman, Bob McGill, Al Iafrate, Wendel Clark), all playing behind two rookie goalies (himself and Allan Bester).
“But that was part of life. Yeah, it was overwhelming, but wonderfully overwhelming.”
Wregget’s second full season was capped by a first-round playoff upset sweep of Chicago and a seven-game Norris Division final against St. Louis.
“That was the ‘Snorris Division,’” Wregget quipped of the generous playoff system that allowed a 25-win team to qualify at all. “But our fans were so excited. It was just sad we couldn’t go further.
“A few years later, Gerry and Gord Stellick, his right-hand man, called me in to be traded to Philadelphia. They felt so bad because they’d drafted me, but assured it was the best move for me. They say this is a business, but there was a humanity to that talk I appreciated.”
NOW
After mixed success with the Flyers, Wregget joined the Pittsburgh Penguins in time to back up Tom Barrasso on their ‘92 Stanley Cup team.
“A big stepping stone. I moved into this all-star starting lineup that has Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and so many others. What a change to be part of that.”
Wregget spent seven seasons in Pittsburgh and made the area his post-career home. The 31 Bar and Grille (for Wregget’s sweater number) in Bridgeville, Pa., does roaring business with locals and “Leafs die-hards” who visit for Steelers and Penguins games.
Wregget has a fiancee, but says his heart will always be in Toronto.
“My daughter’s Mom is from there and I love going back and seeing all my friends and teammates. I still talk to Iafrate and guys such as Chris Kotsopoulos.”
FAVOURITE LEAFS MEMORY
You could say Wregget felt it was destiny he’d be a Leaf, going back to is school days in Nova Scotia where his father was serving in the Canadian Armed Forces.
A teacher, Don Hyslop, used to humourously introduce him as “the future goalie of the Leafs” and, just before the 1982 draft, Bruce Redman, whose family was billeting the Bronco stopper in Lethbridge, Alta., asked Ken where he thought he might be picked.
“Third round, by Toronto,” predicted Wregget, who had studied other goalies by reading The Hockey News, judging that the Leafs were looking for help in net and considered himself better than a couple of juniors rated higher.
He was indeed the first netminder taken at 45th overall. Redman broke the news to him after a Leafs team secretary called the house.
“I got up for school, was having breakfast, took a bite of toast and Bruce asked me to repeat where I thought I’d go. He told me about the Leafs and we both couldn’t believe it.”
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