The Detroit News’s Mike Falkner tells quite the tale in relating a story from Mike Keenan’s memoir/biography this morning:
Unemployed Mike Keenan was sitting at the kitchen table in the Bingham Farms home of Mike and Marian Ilitch, owners of the Detroit Red Wings.
It was January of 1993 and Keenan was out of work after getting fired by the Chicago Blackhawks, who lost in the 1992 Stanley Cup final against Scotty Bowman’s Pittsburgh Penguins. To avoid being seen at Detroit Metro Airport, Keenan and his agent, Rob Campbell, drove from Toronto to Ilitch’s home, where Marian served tuna sandwiches for lunch.
The Red Wings already had a coach, Bryan Murray, who led the team to a franchise-record 47 wins in 1993, but Detroit had been eliminated in the playoffs for two straight years under Murray, and Mike Ilitch wanted a new coach.
What happened next in two separate meetings between Ilitch and Keenan — the details of which were revealed for the first time in Keenan’s recent book, “Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench” — could’ve changed the course of Red Wings history for good, bad, or indifferent.
“After we had started lunch, Mike (Ilitch) asked Rob (Campbell) what it would take to get me here to coach and manage the Red Wings,” Keenan said on The Detroit News/Detroit Red Wings podcast, OctoPulse. “Rob said a $500,000 signing bonus. Mike got up and went to the kitchen sink, had a glass of water and said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Rob said, ‘Because if you don’t, somebody else will.’
“I ended up making an agreement with Mike and Marian, and was put on a kind of a hold situation. Mike gave me $150,000, so I wouldn’t go to another team. Basically, he had the right of first refusal. A little while later, he called me and said there was a family dispute, and I said, ‘Mike, I don’t want to get involved in any family disputes. I’m going to send you your money back,’ which I did.”
Continued (paywall)…
