The Man Who Can't Stop Skating

After a long NHL career, Mike Keane has the cash, cred and cups to retire with a smile. So why in the world is he playing Minor League Hockey in Winnipeg?

He's been off the ice for 15 minutes, but Mike Keane still sits in his stall in the Manitoba Moose locker room, slumped in his pads. Around him, the boys—and compared with Keane, they are boys—hang up their gear, amble to the showers and get dressed, knotting their ties while talking about postgame plans. It's not that they don't care that the Moose have just dropped their second game in two nights to the Rochester Americans, and in déjà vu fashion: blowing a thirdperiod 2-1 lead. It's just that Keane suffers losses more acutely than most. At 39, he's older than anyone in the room. And as captain, he feels responsible for those late goals. But after two decades of pro hockey, losses shouldn't sting like this. After all, he already has his legacy.

A smallish guy with a very big heart, Keane found a cozy niche in the NHL, logging 1,161 games over 16 seasons. He won his first Stanley Cup in 1993 with the Canadiens, won another with the Avalanche in 1996 and a third with the Stars in 1999, becoming one of only eight players in NHL history to win three Cups with three different teams. So he could have retired—no regrets, no questions asked—like Ron Francis and Mark Messier did after the NHL's lost 2004-05 season. He could have gone the coaching route, like former teammates Guy Carbonneau and Kirk Muller did with the Canadiens. Hanging up his skates made sense to everyone. Everyone but Mike Keane.

Sad, some might say—yet another pro who just can't let go. But Keane doesn't fit into that tidy mold. Having avoided the chronic injuries that haunt most NHL lifers, he's got an old man's mind and a young man's body. That's why he still thinks he has something to give to the game. Unfortunately, the affection is no longer mutual. These days, cap-conscious NHL teams are wary of investing in old legs. So in October 2005, Keane took his pride and the fire in his belly and went back to the minors for the first time since 1988.

But minor league hockey doesn't always equal minor league heartache, which is why Keane still hasn't showered on this December night in Winnipeg. No matter the level he's playing at, Keane burns to win. The Moose fell short last year, dropping Game 7 of the North Division Finals to the Grand Rapids Griffins, and now Keane wants to bring the AHL's Calder Cup to Manitoba. And if all his hard work earns him one last go-round in the NHL, that's gravy. "There's a lot of Mike that still believes he can play in the NHL," says Moose coach Scott Arniel. "And I'm not so sure that he can't."

AWAY FROM THE PUCK, there's a scuffle. It's not really clear who shoved whom or who started what on this November night, but Keane has dropped his gloves and thrown off his helmet, revealing his balding red pate to the roaring crowd of 5,957 jersey-clad Moose faithful at the MTS Centre. And the guy Keane has drawn a bead on isn't sure what to think. Fifteen feet away, he cautiously unsnaps his helmet and flips it aside. The hesitation is odd, because throwing down is part of what Griffins tough guy Darryl Bootland does for a living. He runs his hands through his sweat-soaked hair, pushes up his sleeves and warily raises his fists, mimicking Keane's posture. You can read his lips from the stands. "Okay, old man," he mocks, "if you really want to go."

It was comments like that one that first put Bootland in Keane's crosshairs. Throughout Manitoba's playoff series against Grand Rapids last year, Bootland wouldn't stop flapping his jaw. Same thing last week, same thing tonight: You're old. Time to retire. Where's your wheelchair? So, yeah, Keane really wants to go.

The men come together, right hands clenching fistfuls of jersey, their fight a flurry of lefts. Keane, a lean 5'10'', 185 pounds to Bootland's beefier 6'2'', 200, lands a stunner to the bigger man's chin. The crowd bellows approval. The two wrestle for a few more seconds before Keane, on delivering a barrage of lefts, loses his balance and hits the ice as the linesmen finally separate them. As he's led to the penalty box, the captain gets a standing O.

Clearly the old guy still has it, something Moose GM Craig Heisinger has known for a while. Zinger met Keane in 1983, when Keane was a wisp of a rookie in juniors with the Winnipeg Warriors and Heisinger was their equipment manager. During the lockout, Heisinger began buzzing in Keane's ear: You know, you could always play here. Heisinger knew about the marathon Keane was training for, knew about the hours he spent in the gym. "He's like a North End bus seat," Heisinger says, referring to a rough Winnipeg neighborhood, "all cut and ripped."

Heisinger also knew that nobody loved to play hockey more than Keane. So when the lockout ended and no NHL club offered even the minimum $450,000, Keane signed with the Moose for just under $100,000. Not that the money mattered. Although Keane never made more than $2.5 million in a season, he isn't strapped for cash; he recently built a big house in River Heights, just west of downtown. Mostly, Keane was crossing his fingers, hoping an NHL club in need of veteran leadership would pick him up in time for the playoffs. But the trade deadline came and went last year, and the phone didn't ring.

Whatever. Keane happily re-upped with the Moose this season. And if February's NHL deadline passes again without a call, the smart money says he'll sign on for a third.

So it's the NHL or the Moose, because Keane won't play for just any AHL team. He grew up in Winnipeg, dreaming of playing for the Jets before they became the Phoenix Coyotes and the Moose became the only pro show in town. It had to be here, in pancake-flat central Canada, where they say you can watch your dog run away for three miles—if Fido doesn't blow away, that is. With no mountains to buffer the wind as it whips across the plains, Winnipeg experiences some of the country's harshest lows. The intersection of Portage and Main, three blocks from the MTS Centre, is said to be the coldest corner in Canada.

But Keane's folks still live in the house where he was raised, five streets from his new home. His brother and sister and childhood pals live around there too. And at every home game, his wife, Tammy, 9-year-old son, Jackson, and 7-year-old daughter, Olivia, are parked behind the Moose goal. Keane even got to watch Olivia's youth team play on the MTS ice before the Moose home opener in October. So if the Moose aren't quite the Jets and the crowd is a bit sparser than in the NHL, Keane is still living a dream: He's playing pro hockey in Winnipeg.

Not that his NHL buddies understand. Some, like Muller, just laughed. "Every player says they want to play as long as they can," he says. "But typically, they're speaking about the NHL." Others, like Brett Hull, called him crazy. "He said, 'What the hell are you doing? What are you thinking?' " Keane recalls. "You'd never see a superstar doing this."

He's right. When elite players approach the end of the line, the falloff in their performance is right there on the stat sheets. But Keane was never a points guy; his 168 career goals prove that. His game was—and is—full of subtleties that only coaches, players and the smartest fans appreciate. Keane earns his keep in the minors with the same defensive tenacity he showed in the NHL, by blocking shots, working the penalty kill and doing all the little things right: getting the puck out, making passes on the tape, coming hard to the bench, hitting the net, taking fierce pride in not giving up goals. "This is what I want to do," he says. "So as long as I'm a factor on most nights, maybe the best player on some, I'm going to play."

And the Moose don't need Keane to dominate. He's already been where every kid with a hockey stick wants to go, so when he talks, his teammates listen. They imitate his on-ice habits, follow his orders, tape their socks like he does. He's another coach, who happens to take shifts.

And occasionally, the grinder's grinder will dust off a between-the-legs move he never would have dared try in the NHL and actually score a goal. At the beginning of the season, Heisinger asked Keane to improve on the three goals and 14 points he had in 69 games for the Moose last season. Keane obliged. Against Chicago in October, he stole the puck from a Wolves D-man while forechecking on the PK. He deked, cut to the middle and fired the game-winner top shelf. He added an empty-netter in the closing second for his third goal of the year, equaling last season's total. Through 44 games, Keane has already tallied 16 points, and in January he was named captain of the Canadian team at the AHL All-Star Game, the first All-Star appearance of his pro career. "Mike teaches us how to get ready, how to be prepared, how to focus, how to communicate, what to expect," says 21-year-old Moose wing Mike Brown. "He just knows so much about the game."

And it's because of what Keane knows that he's not worried about life after hockey. He turned down two NHL assistant jobs and one AHL head coaching job to play for the Moose, and it's a safe bet that more offers will come. But he's holding out for an offer he'd never refuse. Keane thinks there's still a chance an NHL team will decide that having more Cup cred in its locker room could only help its postseason chances. Surprisingly, he might be right. Scouts from several NHL teams told The Magazine that they've got their eye on Manitoba. "Mike Keane brings a wealth of experience to the table," says one. "If you're serious about winning a Cup, you need experienced depth." Of course, a return to the NHL means the Moose would face the playoffs without their captain. For Keane, the decision to leave would be tough, but he'd make it. "If it happens, it happens," he says.

For now, Keane will endure the merciless 13-day road trips, the long bus rides, the endless screenings of Wedding Crashers and the Xbox tournaments he gets roped into by his 20-year-old teammates. He'll keep doing what he does—showing up first, leaving last, going hard until the whistle—and he'll stick around until the whole thing stops being so much fun.

And why not? His game hasn't changed, nothing hurts and his family's behind him, come hell or the NHL. Tammy has given up on a combined birthdayretirement bash when her husband turns 40 on May 29. She's been with Keane for 20 years (they met in Moose Jaw when he was playing juniors), and she knows the man she married. "Mike still loves to go to the rink," she says. "He even goes in on his days off. In the end, it's all he's done his whole life."

He's just following sage advice. In 1992, when Keane's Canadiens visited the Twin Cities, Habs great Bob Gainey was coaching the North Stars. The two were friends; Gainey's last year with Montreal had been Keane's first. Walking into the Minnesota cold after the game, the legend gave the learner something to think about. "He told me to play as many games as I can," Keane says.

"He told me to remember that once it's over, it's over forever."

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