St. Louis Blues History: The Mike Keenan Deal Rears Its Head Again
By Todd Panula
The St. Louis Blues thought they were getting a mad genius when they brought Mike Keenan on board. Instead, his arrival slowly gutted the team whether by design or by happenstance.
July 24th was apparently a busy day for the St. Louis Blues in the past. We discussed the degradation of the center position with a certain acquisition. The Blues also lost a key piece due to the fact they picked up Mike Keenan.
Only seven days after giving the keys to the kingdom to Mike Keenan, naming him both coach and GM, the Blues and New York Rangers settled their lawsuit. Unfortunately for St. Louis, it involved a trade that sent promising prospect Petr Nedved to the Big Apple for Esa Tikkanen and Doug Lister.
Now, the Blues did not get hosed in this deal. Tikkanen was aging, but still managed to produce a decent amount. In fact, he scored more during the following season than Nedved did for New York (12 goals and 35 points compared to 11 goals and 23 points).
Ultimately, Tikkanen wasn’t here very long. Although he was with the team for parts of two seasons, due to the lockout and a poor start to the following year, Tikkanen only saw action in 54 games total for the Blues.
On the flip side, Nedved never amounted to the prediction of 120, 130 or even 150 point totals that Neil Smith was talking about. He needs to lay off whatever he was on at the time.
Even so, Nedved proved to be a pretty good player and another example of a player leaving the Blues to achieve greater heights with other teams. Additionally, he played center, which the Blues have been traditionally thin at in recent decades.
Once with the Pittsburgh Penguins, he scored 99 points. While that would be his career high, he was still a pretty consistent scorer, with point totals in the 60’s and 70’s quite often, up until the early 2000’s.
He fell off the map a bit and bounced around from team to team in the mid 2000’s, but still a few good years with him on the team would have been better than 2/3 of a season from Tikkanen and only 37 games out of Lister.
It was just part of the havoc that Keenan wrought upon this team. As a fan, I won’t lie. I was excited when the Blues brought him in.
He had just won a Cup. He had fresh, new ideas about how to construct the team compared to a team that was constantly disappointing.
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It can’t be said that I didn’t like having Tikkanen either. He was a big name with championship pedigree both from the Rangers and his earlier days with the Edmonton Oilers.
Everything becomes clearer in hindsight though. Keenan did little but fracture the team. Although he did acquire Al MacInnis and Chris Pronger, he also traded away Brendan Shanahan and Curtis Joseph. He also did his best to drive Brett Hull out of town.
Tikkanen had a good, but brief run. Yet, the Blues likely would have been better off with Nedved over the long haul.
The Blues have a long history of getting the wrong side of the deal, especially from the league. There are situations like this lawsuit, which precipitated the Nedved trade. There is also the outrageous awarding of Scott Stevens to New Jersey for the Blues signing Shanahan. However, it must also be said that the Blues put themselves in those positions.
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It’s just a shame that the Blues seem to end up on the short end even when they think they are doing right. They thought they were doing right by bringing in Keenan. Unfortunately, with this trade as an example of what was to come, it only ended in more Blues heartbreak.