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Mike Keenan

Mike Keenan is one of hockey’s most accomplished and commanding coaches, known for delivering results at the highest levels of the game. He reached multiple Stanley Cup Finals with different NHL teams and won the Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers in 1994. Keenan also guided Team Canada to victory at the 1987 Canada Cup and later captured a Gagarin Cup championship in the KHL. His demanding style and winning pedigree made him one of hockey’s defining bench bosses.

Mike Keenan

Michael Edward Keenan is a Canadian-American former professional hockey coach. Previously, he served as head coach and/or general manager with several NHL teams between 1984 and 2009. He currently ranks sixth in playoff wins with 96. He is noted for his early career success in coaching, which started with reaching the Stanley Cup Finals in his rookie season in 1985. In 1987, he reached the Finals once again. Months later, he led 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.[1] He left the Flyers for Chicago in 1988. He reached the Finals once again in 1992 but lost again. After leaving the Blackhawks and spending a year away from coaching, Keenan won a Stanley Cup championship as coach of the New York Rangers in 1994.

He is one of three coaches to coach in a playoff Game 7 ten times, for which he won five times.[2] Keenan was the third person to lead three different teams (Philadelphia, Chicago, New York) to the Stanley Cup Finals; only one coach has accomplished the feat since Keenan.[3][4]

Keenan coached for eight National Hockey League teams from 1984 to 2009. He also won the Gagarin Cup while coaching Metallurg Magnitogorsk in 2014, and he became the first head coach to have won championships in both the NHL and KHL, later to be joined by Bob Hartley after his win in 2021.[5]

Currently, he is 15th all time in National Hockey League wins as one of 23 head coaches with 600 wins in NHL history. In each of his first eleven seasons, Keenan led his team to the Stanley Cup playoffs; in the subsequent nine seasons that followed, his teams only made it to the playoffs twice. His tough coaching style and attitude towards his players have earned him the nickname “Iron Mike“.