Mike Keenan’s Affection for Former Players


Once a Mike Keenan darling, always a Mike Keenan darling, at least this is what the Florida Panthers’ signing of 41-year-old goaltender Ed Belfour seems to insist. Don’t get me wrong, Belfour was one of the league’s best goalies in his prime. But Belfour is way past his prime, and as I heard a young goaltender recently say, "He’s hanging around too long."

Anyone who watched Mario Lemieux and Steve Yzerman play this season saw players who were shadows of their former selves, and frankly, it wasn’t fun to watch. Sure, Eddie Belfour’s always going to be the goalie Keenan rode when his Chicago Blackhawks were one of the league’s best teams in the early 1990’s. He’s always going to be the goalie who won tons of games. But in this past season, Lemieux and Yzerman were still the Hall of Fame centers they’d always been—save for the fact that they weren’t, not anymore, not right now, not in this moment, anyhow.

Not for Iron Mike’s sake, but for Belfour’s, I hope his health works out and he can play at a competent level. But to go from Roberto Luongo to the two goaltenders the Panthers will have in the nets this year—let’s just say (I could surely be proven wrong, of course) that I rate Florida’s goaltending, at this point and at best, as a huge question mark.

Of course Florida’s goaltending probably wouldn’t concern me as much if Iron Mike had actually blown Kevin Lowe away and traded for another former Keenan player, Chris Pronger. In seeing Keenan sign an aging Belfour, knowing Keenan’s historic preference for veteran players, one can only conclude that Kevin Lowe demanded "the moon" from Keenan and Iron Mike, for some unbeknownst reason, wouldn’t ante up.
Sure, he would have had to mortgage the future for the present—but since when has that ever stopped Keenan?

Signing Belfour on the cheap is low-risk. It’s not nearly as risky as trading away future talent for one of the game’s best defensemen, and viewed logically like that, the lack of a deal for Pronger and the signing of Belfour make good sense. Yet if Keenan was so in need of one of his former players, well, I’d rather have a player still in his prime.

Seriously, if you’re the Panthers and you want to stop your opponents from scoring? Who’s going to help more, a past his prime goalie or an elite defenseman in his prime?

Anyhow, here’s hoping Eddie Belfour can prove me wrong and help his team, or at the very least, not embarrass himself.

But when I even think about writing that last line—about the 2nd winningiest goalie of all time embarrassing himself—what does that really say?
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