Let's Remember A Star: Mike Keane
He wasn't the instrument in getting Dallas Stars their first and only Cup win in 1999, but he was instrumental.
Stanley Cup winners aren’t built any one specific way. Sure, the principles are always the same — smart drafting, and stellar roster management — but that extra 2 percent that puts a team over never seems like a big deal until it is. In recent years it was Colorado’s trade for Artturi Lehkonen, whose previous coach had him stuck on the fourth line; Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow for Tampa Bay; David Perron for St. Louis, etc. For the 1999 Cup winning Dallas Stars, that player was Mike Keane.
(Actually) Keane was brought in briefly the season before along with Brian Skrudland in a trade with the New York Rangers involving Todd Harvey. To backtrack, Harvey was drafted 9th overall by the Stars in the 1993 NHL draft. To backtrack further, he scored 100 points in the OHL his draft year. His shooting ability combined with his piss, vinegar, and knuckle-soothing talents made him a potential part of the rich tradition of bloodthirsty power forwards like Rick Tocchet and Wendel Clark. He lived up to half of that profile at least.
Harvey would end up just a warm body in the middle six, scoring a meager 99 points through his first 239 games with Dallas. Still, he was only 22 at the time of being traded. New York was banking on Harvey scratching the surface in exchange for a player with a similar profile in twilight of his career: Mike Keane.
Keane was coming off a paltry 18 points in 70 games with the Rangers, so nothing special either. But Keane, even then, had a special place in my Stars heart. I grew up with hockey, but I didn’t grow up understanding the talent. I understood that goals won the game obviously, but I wasn’t emotionally invested in how they happened. A puck hitting the back of the net wasn’t as exciting to me as the symphony of collision. The connection for me was always the fights. I grew up on fighting. My dad was an amateur boxer (which he wanted me to be, but that disastrous alternate timeline was ultimately avoided thanks to my mom - thanks mom!), and so boxing was a big part of our relationship, and thus, my childhood. That fighting was allowed in hockey made my love of the sport almost formulaic. And so I ended up idolizing Shane Churla instead of Mike Modano. The stars in my household were Bob Probert and Tie Domi. Not Pavel Bure or Sergei Fedorov.
Why Keane specifically? He was literally my first hockey memory. It was his fight with Bill Guerin from those classic Don Cherry videos (which are six layers of cringe in retrospect) that hooked me immediately. I didn’t know who the hell Keane was, but I knew he could scrap. Just an absolutely fearless athlete.
There wasn’t a whole lot else to Keane’s game, especially at that point in his career. As mentioned, Keane was in the twilight of his career. He was only 30 years old when he came to Dallas, but he already had 12 full seasons under his belt; but what a career. By the time he reached the lone star state he had won two cups, one with the Montreal Canadiens in 1993, and one with the Colorado Avalanche in 1996.
For those new to hockey in Texas, 1998 was a big year for Dallas. They didn’t have Brett Hull yet but they also didn’t have him on their radar.
Quick fact: Hull would have stayed a Blue if St. Louis had offered him the no-trade clause he requested.
As far as Dallas was concerned, the ‘98 roster was their core. Modano, Joe Nieuwendyk, Jere Lehtinen, Sergei Zubov, Darryl Sydor, Derian Hatcher, and Richard Matvichuk — this salt of the earth group was expected to be the group that could jailbreak the stranglehold the Devils, Avalanche, and Red Wings had on their era (from 1995 to 2003 the Stanley Cup belonged to one of the above three…’99 being the exception). The Stars finished 2nd in the West in ‘97 and 1st in ‘98. The pressure was on the stars to produce, and the supporting cast to keep them from having to produce as much.
Regardless of his limited skillset, Keane proved to be a big game player right off the bat. He would factor into the ‘98 season once the playoffs got started. Dallas had been upset by the Edmonton Oilers in the opening round the year before, so getting through the first round was a special hurdle. The Stars’ first round victory over the San Jose Sharks was bittersweet thanks to Bryan Marchment’s obscenely dirty hit on Nieuwendyk in Game 1, but Keane would finish what Marchment started with a beautiful delayed shot in the slot.
Dallas drew the Oilers next. It was a crucial series not just because they needed to exorcise their Canadian demon, but because the Oilers were obnoxiously scrappy. Except for Doug Weight, they didn’t have any stars — their core was extremely young at the time — but they were simultaneously big, fast, and nasty. Keane fit right in, with the right winger assisting on the Greg Adams game winner that eliminated the Oilers in five.
Quick rant: I know I’ve made this point before but the hockey world worrying so much about being denied their beloved Battle of Alberta reminds me of just how many unimaginative marks watch this damn game. Fine. Edmonton vs. Dallas doesn’t have a cool nickname (the Battle of Route 287? Route 287 doesn’t actually connect the two cities of course, but maybe that’s the metaphor — hockey’s inability to build infrastructure by creating a bridge for new connections?), but these teams hated each other. For f’ sake they got Modano to drop his gloves! So please hockey media: please accept the creation of new bloodfeuds instead of recycling old ones.
Without their second line center, nobody expected Dallas to beat Detroit. They put up a valiant effort, but even the six games was deceiving after lucksacking a Game 5 win with Jamie Langenbrunner’s slapshot from the rafters. (Credit to Langenbrunner. That is as dangerous a shot from center ice as you’ll ever see.)
It was also a big game for Keane, who had a goal and an assist that night. The addition of Hull was Dallas’ biggest addition the following year but the development of Dallas’ checking line of Keane, Pat Verbeek, and Guy Carbonneau was also crucial. Carbonneau is the player on that line everyone remembers and rightfully so; we’re talking about the man nominated for 10 Frank J. Selke Trophies when he got to Dallas (his first at 23 years of age, winning thrice); the man who shutdown Wayne F’ing Gretzky in 1993. Carbonneau was always the guy on Dallas’ checking line, but people seem to forget; he wasn’t the only one with Selke votes.
Keane had three, in point of fact. Having two players with Selke blood put an exclamation point on how good Dallas’ checking line was, and Keane was an essential part of that. He wasn’t a big time point producer, but he had plenty of big games in the playoffs; think back to Keane’s game winner in Game 7 of the 1999 Western Conference Finals (by far the most nerve-racking of Dallas’ Cup run since I didn’t think they were the better team*); him scoring the only only Dallas goal in Game 6 against New Jersey in the 2000 Cup Finals; or him setting the tone in Game 3 of the 2001 Conference Semi-Finals versus St. Louis. He only played in Dallas for four years, but each year he did, the Stars were a part of the Cup conversation.
Players like Keane are important for contending teams. I’m not talking about “character” players. I’m talking about good players — players who will never be stars, but who can still contribute meaningfully to a team’s story. Keane was one of Dallas’ better character actors for the franchise’s greatest story thus far. Let’s just hope it’s not the last.
*I still don’t. Not having Milan Hejduk and Peter Forsberg all seven games undoubtedly made a difference, and Matvichuk was the cause of that. He was a killer in that series. That doesn’t mean I think Colorado should have won (Dallas won the last two games of that series in dominating fashion), but the physicality in the 90s was so next level violent even the coaches didn’t always have the stomach for it.
Loved Keaner. The checking line with Guy, Keane and the little ball of hate were must see TV. I had only been a casual fan of the team in it's Dallas infancy. '97 had me invested, '98 had me hooked. I've been a rabid watch every game kind of fan since. Good stuff giving Mike a pat on the back!