Iron Mike : My Life Behind the Bench

In the fraternity of NHL coaches, some stand out for their winning records, some for their big personalities and some for their unprecedented methods. Mike Keenan stands out on all counts, and more. Breaking into the NHL as head coach of the Philadephia Flyers in 1984, Keenan got instant results. The Flyers hadn''t won a playoff round in three seasons; he led them to the Cup Final in his first year. In 1987, he coached a fractious Team Canada to victory in the Canada Cup using a strategy few of his peers had to master: if your team doesn''t get along, give them somebody to hate, together. Keenan instilled unity in his teams by making sure they all wanted to show him up. The wins took care of themselves. Keenan''s teams won at every level. With championships in the OHL and AHL, it seemed only a matter of time before his resume would include the ultimate prize, and in typical Mike Keenan fashion he would win it on the grandest of stages. The NHL''s most valuable franchise, the New York Rangers, hadn''t won a Cup in 54 years. At the time, it was the league''s longest championship drought. But with five-time Stanley Cup champion Mark Messier now captain of a star-studded Rangers lineup, there was only one thing missing for a championship run on Broadway: a coach who could focus all the talent and desire on victory. After a season of controversy and clashing egos, many of them involving the team''s bedevilling new coach, in 1994 the Stanley Cup finally returned to Madison Square Garden, considered by many to be the greatest Cup win by a US-based NHL team. In the hands of veteran journalist and bestselling author Scott Morrison, Iron Mike takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most explosive runs to the Cup in NHL history, one that has never been told like Keenan at long last shares in this book. Fans also get their long-awaited chance to understand what one of hockey''s greatest and most confounding coaches was up to. There is only one Iron Mike in hockey, and love him or hate him, his memoir is a must-read for any fan of the game.