Mike Keenan is Metallurg Magnitogorsk’s new coach

Iron Mike Keenan has coached for eight NHL teams since he began coaching in the 1984/1985 season. These coaching tenures usually end with someone in tears – a goalie, nine times out of ten. Keenan does not have a reputation as being someone easy to work for, and he's been given power that's incompatible to his personality. St. Louis Blues fans, like myself, despise Keenan for running Brendan Shanahan, Curtis Joseph, Wayne Gretzky, and Brett Hull out of St. Louis. He was once chased down the hall by bruseing NHL defender Dave Manson, and Jeremy Roenick has a multitude of stories even worse than that one. Keenan can sling arrows with the best of them, and that combative personality either works with players or it doesn't.

His shelf-life is brief, which is why despite the fact that he's won a Stanley Cup, he hasn't coached a team since his last tenure with the Calgary Flames in 2009. He led the Flames to a playoff appearance and about  halfway through the next season before his message ran out, so he's still a decent coach. He's just kind of a jerk.

He's going to have to grab an "English to Russian Jerk Dictionary" for his next coaching gig, because he's just been announced as the next coach of Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the KHL. That team might sound familiar because it's the team that Penguins star Evgeni Malkin played for during the lockout. The team announced his arrival with the most Russian video humanly possible:

Wow. The spins are epic. Whoever directed this was aiming for Stalinist propaganda levels of awkward. Come to think of it, Keenan does kind of smack of the departed Soviet leader in some of these shots… and in his reputation. Russia has always loved the tsars and dictators who ruled with an iron fist, and they've usually dumped the leaders who tried to "relate" or "be progressive" or "give them basic human rights." Look up Tsar Alexander II if you don't believe me.

Keenan might have finally found a home for his message after all. Make way for Tsar Mike the Terrible, or as the Russians might wind up calling him, Mike the Great.

(H/T New York Times)

About Laura Astorian

Laura Astorian is the head editor for the SB Nation blog St. Louis Game Time and has been a Blues fan from childhood. She promises that any anti-Blackhawks bias will be left at the door. Maybe.

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