Podcast (Audio) Mike Keenan - SportsLit

[HairyKneel]

Guy was a clown. Pat Quinn built this team from the ground up.

And then Quinn was asleep at the wheel. He was pissed at the new ownership after he had hired his buddy Rick Ley to coach the team and then he had to fire him. Then they hire the idiot Tom Renney, he hung onto guys like Babych, Murzyn, McLean and several others until they had no value.

I'm a Quinn guy from 87-95. But he deserved the boot in 97. Sure they had Almo, but Bure wanted out long before Keenan got here. Linden's play was cratering. They let Diduck walk, Ronning too.

Quinn built it, then he let it rot.

 

[Tim Calhoun]

Benning was just incompetent as a GM. Keenan (& Messier) was a poor excuse for a human being.

I know this is off topic, but don’t get Benning off the hook for being a bad person and chalk it up to being incompetent (which he was). Benning’s selfishness and ego hurt the franchise for much longer than Messier and Keenan ever did.

 

[bandwagonesque]

Mike Keenan made a few good trades that set the team up well for the next several years under different coaching and management, and whatever credit is due for that he can have.

Mike Keenan also methodically alienated nearly all of his players in the most bitter, silly, dysfunctional ways imaginable then basically checked out because he was too chickenshit to allow himself to understand he was responsible for it. Reading an organized account of it would have anyone in near-disbelief.

 

[MS]

The worst thing I can say about someone involved with this team is that 'they made me embarrassed to be a fan of the Vancouver Canucks'.

This really only applies to Keenan/Messier and to Jim Benning. And some of Donald Brashear's antics were right up there.

 

[bandwagonesque]

The worst thing I can say about someone involved with this team is that 'they made me embarrassed to be a fan of the Vancouver Canucks'.

This really only applies to Keenan/Messier and to Jim Benning. And some of Donald Brashear's antics were right up there.

And the whole team in general between about 1975 and 1990, which probably needs a scholarly treatment someday. Doug Beardsley had a great chapter in Country On Ice about attending a Canucks game in the mid-eighties that explores the vague apathy and irresolution that characterized the team for a very long time probably until the early 1990s. But I digress.

 

[Canucker]

And the whole team in general between about 1975 and 1990, which probably needs a scholarly treatment someday. Doug Beardsley had a great chapter in Country On Ice about attending a Canucks game in the mid-eighties that explores the vague apathy and irresolution that characterized the team for a very long time probably until the early 1990s. But I digress.

If only Wetcoaster were still around to offer a lengthy dissertation on the subject.

 

[MS]

And the whole team in general between about 1975 and 1990, which probably needs a scholarly treatment someday. Doug Beardsley had a great chapter in Country On Ice about attending a Canucks game in the mid-eighties that explores the vague apathy and irresolution that characterized the team for a very long time probably until the early 1990s. But I digress.

There's a difference between just being a 'bad team' and being ashamed to be a fan.

I've also said before that it's not as simple as '1976-1991 were horrible'. The period from 78-83 they were a fun lunchbucket team that were usually *just* below .500 and would be over .500 by today's standards, and like half that team are still cult heroes in Vancouver. And then from Quinn/Linden arriving there was a steady upward from 1988 or so onward.

It's the period from about 1984-88 that is just extremely dark.

 

[Hit the post]

i

There's a difference between just being a 'bad team' and being ashamed to be a fan.

I've also said before that it's not as simple as '1976-1991 were horrible'. The period from 78-83 they were a fun lunchbucket team that were usually *just* below .500 and would be over .500 by today's standards, and like half that team are still cult heroes in Vancouver. And then from Quinn/Linden arriving there was a steady upward from 1988 or so onward.

It's the period from about 1984-88 that is just extremely dark.

No cap back then & the Canucks ownership weren't exactly spending money like the 'rich teams'. Doesn't mean a strong management team couldn't work to overcome that but it does mean the margin of error is extremely slim. Throw in the WHA (which I *think* hurt weaker teams like the Canucks who looked to actually be turning the corner under Phil Mahoney) raiding players from the league.

Quinn had to work with this type of environment (probably the reason why he had tried the 'contract switcheroo' on Bure [eg., currency paid on contract]).

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

And then Quinn was asleep at the wheel. He was pissed at the new ownership after he had hired his buddy Rick Ley to coach the team and then he had to fire him. Then they hire the idiot Tom Renney, he hung onto guys like Babych, Murzyn, McLean and several others until they had no value.

I'm a Quinn guy from 87-95. But he deserved the boot in 97. Sure they had Almo, but Bure wanted out long before Keenan got here. Linden's play was cratering. They let Diduck walk, Ronning too.

Quinn built it, then he let it rot.

None of that I disagree with - but he still built it from the ground up.

 

[MS]

Quinn had two problems post-1994, one that he could control and one that he couldn't :

1) After being one of the bigger, meaner teams in the NHL from 1991-94, Quinn zigged while the rest of the league zagged and the sport headed into the Dead Puck Era. While everyone else was copying NJ, we traded for Mogilny but also a bunch of other soft skill players - Beranek, Oksiuta, Sillinger, etc. - and it left us out-of-sync with the direction the league was going.

2) The Griffiths were just too small-time as owners post 1994 lockout and the rising salaries basically priced them out of the league. Geoff Courtnall, as an example, the team was forced to try nickel-and-diming him down to $600k vs. the $700k he wanted and he hit free agency and was in disbelief when St. Louis offered him $2 million. We lost most of the guts of the 1994 team because we couldn't afford to pay them in the new financial landscape of the league.