Dave Keon

Dave Keon
Born	March 22, 1940 (1940-03-22) (age 71) Rouyn-Noranda, PQ, CAN
Height	5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)
Weight	163 lb (74 kg; 11 st 9 lb)
Position	Centre
Shot	Left
Played for	NHL Toronto Maple Leafs Hartford Whalers WHA Minnesota Fighting Saints Indianapolis Racers New England Whalers
Playing career	1960–1982
Hall of Fame, 1986

David Michael Keon (born March 22, 1940) is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey centre. He played professionally from 1960–61 to 1981–82, including 15 seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1986.

Playing career

Keon played junior hockey in Toronto for the St. Michael's Buzzers of the Ontario Hockey Association's Metro Junior B league in 1956–57; on December 20, 1956, he scored seven goals in one game.^[1] In February 1957, he was named to the league's eastern all-star team and was picked by NHL scouts as the top prospect in the league. Keon was selected as the league's rookie of the year, finishing second in scoring, and his team won the league championship. He played some games that season for the Junior A St. Michael's Majors, and moved to that club full-time for the 1957–58 season. Keon played for St. Michael's through the end of the 1960 season, when he turned professional and joined the Sudbury Wolves of the Eastern Professional Hockey League for four playoff games. They would be the only games he would ever play in the minor leagues.

Keon joined the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League for the 1960–61 season, winning the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's top rookie with 20 goals and 45 points in his first season. It was his first of six consecutive 20-goal seasons. In his second year in the NHL, Keon was named to the Second All-Star Team and won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy as most gentlemanly player, taking only one minor penalty through the entire season. He repeated as Lady Byng winner in 1962–63, again taking only a single minor penalty all year.

He was the Leafs' leading scorer in the 1963–64, 1966–67 and 1969–70 seasons, and the team's top goal scorer in 1970–71 and 1972–73. Keon was considered one of the fastest skaters in the NHL,^{[citation needed]} and one of the best defensive forwards of his era.^{[citation needed]} He would usually play against the opposing team's top centre, and developed a reputation for neutralizing some of the league's top scorers. In 1970–71, he scored eight shorthanded goals, setting an NHL record, which was later broken by Mario Lemieux in 1988–89, with 13 shorthanded goals.

Keon won four Stanley Cups with the Leafs, playing on the Cup-winning teams of 1961–62, 1962–63, 1963–64 and 1966–67. In the 1967 Cup final, he shut down Jean Béliveau, the star centreman of the Montreal Canadiens, in the final two games and was voted the most valuable player of the playoffs, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy (his eight points is the fewest ever by a non-goalie Conn Smythe winner). He remains the only Leaf ever to have won the trophy named for the former owner of the club.

He was named team captain on October 31, 1969, succeeding George Armstrong who was said to be retiring from hockey. Armstrong returned to the Leafs two weeks later and played for another two seasons, but Keon remained captain and would wear the C through the rest of his years with the Leafs.

Keon hoped to make Team Canada for the 1972 Summit Series, but was coming off one of the worst years of his career, finishing the 1971–72 season with his lowest points-per-game average since his rookie year. The final pick for Team Canada came down between Keon and Bobby Clarke. It is believed that Clarke was selected, as he had more points. He was not selected for Team Canada, but the Ottawa Nationals of the World Hockey Association made a strong effort to sign Keon, whom they had placed on their negotiation list earlier that year. Harold Ballard, who had become the Leafs' majority owner in March 1972, said that Keon did not provide the leadership the team needed during the previous season and was refusing to give Keon a big salary increase after a poor year. Keon signed a letter of intent with the Nationals, and received a $50,000 cheque from the team, but the deal fell apart just before training camp. Keon signed a three-year deal with the Leafs, and rebounded strongly in 1972–73, scoring 37 goals. On November 22, 1972, he scored his 297th goal as a Leaf, passing Armstrong and Frank Mahovlich to become the team's all-time leading goal scorer.

Early into the 1974–75 season, Ballard publicly blasted Keon, saying that the team was not getting good leadership from its captain and vowing never again to agree to a no-trade clause in a contract, as he had with Keon. When Keon's contract expired at the end of the season, Ballard made it clear that there was no place for him on the Leafs. The Leafs believed they had some strong young prospects at centre who needed more ice time, and Keon was again asking for a contract with a no-trade clause. The 35-year-old Keon was told he could make his own deal with another NHL team, but any club signing him would have been required to provide compensation to the Leafs. Ballard set the compensation price so high that other teams shied away from signing him, even though the Leafs had no intention of keeping him. In effect, Ballard had blocked Keon from going to another NHL team.^[2]

In August 1975, with the Leafs still controlling his NHL rights, Keon jumped to the World Hockey Association, signing a deal with the Minnesota Fighting Saints reportedly worth $300,000 over two seasons. The head coach of the Saints was Harry Neale, an old friend of Keon's. The team, and Keon, played well, but struggled badly financially. With 21 games left in the season, the team folded. Keon was expected to return to the NHL and was not included in the dispersal sale of Saints players to other WHA teams. The NHL's New York Islanders wanted Keon, but needed to negotiate a deal for his NHL rights with the Leafs. Again, the Leafs' asking price (said to have been a first-round draft pick) was too high, and a disappointed Keon signed with the WHA's Indianapolis Racers in March 1976.

The Fighting Saints were revived for the start of the WHA's 1976–77 season, and Keon was traded back to Minnesota, but the team folded for good half-way through the season (with Keon as its leading scorer). Keon was briefly the property of the Edmonton Oilers who immediately traded him to the New England Whalers in January 1977. He would remain with the team through the rest of his career. In the 1977–78 season, Keon was joined on the Whalers by Gordie Howe, the team's leading scorer, despite turning 50 before the end of the season. Keon returned to the NHL in 1979 when the renamed Hartford Whalers became one of four WHA teams to join the NHL. Bobby Hull joined the Whalers that season, with Keon, Howe, and Hull sometimes playing as a forward line. Howe and Hull retired at the end of the season, leaving Keon as the oldest player in the NHL. Keon played two more seasons with the Whalers and announced his retirement on June 30, 1982, at age 42.

Retirement

Following his retirement from hockey, Keon moved to Florida and worked in real estate for several years.

Bitter over his treatment by Ballard and the Leafs, Keon refused for many years to have any relationship with the Leafs organization, even after Ballard's death and after the club changed ownership several times. Other Leaf players who clashed with Ballard's management did reconcile, most notably Keon's successor as club captain, Darryl Sittler, who accepted an invitation from GM Cliff Fletcher to return as a consultant.

Keon turned down several offers of reconciliation from the team, including an invitation to the closing ceremony for Maple Leaf Gardens in 1999 and a proposed ceremony to honour his number. Despite growing public pleas from fans who asked Keon to mend fences with the club, he refused saying that he would not have anything to do with the club unless it changes its policy of only "honouring" numbers of former star players instead of retiring them. The current policy of the Leafs is to only retire the numbers of players who suffered a career-ending accident while a member of the team.^[3]

On March 22, 1991, with the Leafs under new management after Ballard's death, Keon played on a team of Leaf all-stars against their counterparts from the Montreal Canadiens in an old-timers game at Maple Leaf Gardens called Legends' Night in Canada. "After that, I figured out the new ownership was no different than Ballard, and I had no use for it," Keon later said.^[4] In 2005, he told the Toronto Sun that the new owners (majority equity owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, chaired by Larry Tanenbaum) "would like to say they are different, but they are all the same."^[5]

In January 2007, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced that Keon would attend a pre-game ceremony to honour its 1967 Stanley Cup winning team. Keon was one of several members of the 1967 team to appear on-ice at the Air Canada Centre before the Leafs' game on February 17, 2007 — the 80th anniversary of first game played by the Toronto franchise after being renamed the Maple Leafs in 1927. Keon was introduced to the crowd second last, just prior to 1967 captain George Armstrong, and received a long standing ovation.

His granddaughter, Kaitlyn Keon joined the Brown Bears women's ice hockey program in 2011.^[6]

Awards and honours

• Calder Memorial Trophy: 1961
• Lady Byng Memorial Trophy: 1962, 1963
• NHL Second All-Star Team: 1962, 1971
• NHL All-Star Game: 1962, 1963, 1964, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1973
• Stanley Cup: 1962, 1963, 1964, 1967
• Conn Smythe Trophy: 1967
• Paul Deneau Trophy: 1977, 1978
• Hockey Hall of Fame: 1986
• In 1998, Keon was ranked number 69 on The Hockey News' list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players.
• The Aréna Dave Keon in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec is named in his honour.

Career statistics

				Regular season						Playoffs
Season	Team	League		GP	G	A	Pts	PIM		GP	G	A	Pts	PIM
1956–57	St. Michael's Majors	OHA-Jr.		4	1	3	4	0		—	—	—	—	—
1957–58	St. Michael's Majors	OHA-Jr.		45	23	27	50	29		9	8	5	13	10
1958–59	St. Michael's Majors	OHA-Jr.		47	33	38	71	31		15	4	9	13	8
1959–60	St. Michael's Majors	OHA-Jr.		46	16	29	45	8		10	8	10	18	2
1959–60	Kitchener-Waterloo	OHA Sr.		1	0	1	1	0		—	—	—	—	—
1959–60	Sudbury Wolves	EPHL		—	—	—	—	—		4	2	2	4	2
1960–61	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		70	20	25	45	6		5	1	1	2	0
1961–62	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		64	26	35	61	2		12	5	3	8	0
1962–63	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		68	28	28	56	2		10	7	5	12	0
1963–64	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		70	23	37	60	6		14	7	2	9	2
1964–65	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		65	21	29	50	10		6	2	2	4	2
1965–66	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		69	24	30	54	4		4	0	2	2	0
1966–67	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		66	19	33	52	2		12	3	5	8	0
1967–68	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		67	11	37	48	4		—	—	—	—	—
1968–69	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		75	27	34	61	12		4	1	3	4	2
1969–70	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		72	32	30	62	6		—	—	—	—	—
1970–71	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		76	38	38	76	4		6	3	2	5	0
1971–72	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		72	18	30	48	4		5	2	3	5	0
1972–73	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		76	37	36	73	2		—	—	—	—	—
1973–74	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		74	25	28	53	7		4	1	2	3	0
1974–75	Toronto Maple Leafs	NHL		78	16	43	59	4		7	0	5	5	0
1975–76	Minnesota Fighting Saints	WHA		57	26	38	64	4		—	—	—	—	—
1975–76	Indianapolis Racers	WHA		12	3	7	10	2		7	2	2	4	2
1976–77	Minnesota Fighting Saints	WHA		42	13	38	51	2		—	—	—	—	—
1976–77	New England Whalers	WHA		34	14	25	39	8		5	3	1	4	0
1977–78	New England Whalers	WHA		77	24	38	62	2		14	5	11	16	4
1978–79	New England Whalers	WHA		79	22	43	65	2		10	3	9	12	2
1979–80	Hartford Whalers	NHL		76	10	52	62	10		3	0	1	1	0
1980–81	Hartford Whalers	NHL		80	13	34	47	26		—	—	—	—	—
1981–82	Hartford Whalers	NHL		78	8	11	19	6		—	—	—	—	—
NHL totals				1296	396	590	986	117		92	32	36	68	6
WHA totals				301	102	189	291	20		36	13	23	36	8

See also

• Captain (ice hockey)
• List of NHL players with 1000 games played

References

1. ^ "Keon Scores 7, Buzzers Win, 10-0". Globe and Mail (Toronto): p. 23. 1956-12-21. 
2. ^ CNN. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/hockey/nhl/news/2001/02/16/sayitaintso_mapleleafs/. 
3. ^ [1]
4. '^ 67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory, and the End of an Empire, Damien Cox & Gord Stellick, John Wiley & Sons Canada, 2004, p. 224.
5. ^ "Keon keeps distance: Reunion with Leafs 'highly unlikely'," Mike Zeisberger, Toronto Sun, September 17, 2005.
6. ^ http://www.brownbears.com/sports/w-hockey/2011-12/bios/keon_kaitlyn_cie1

External links

• Dave Keon's biography at Legends of Hockey
• Dave Keon's career stats at The Internet Hockey Database

Preceded by Mike Rogers	Hartford Whalers captain 1981–82	Succeeded by Russ Anderson
Preceded by George Armstrong	Toronto Maple Leafs captain 1969–75	Succeeded by Darryl Sittler
Preceded by Roger Crozier	Winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy 1967	Succeeded by Glenn Hall
Preceded by Bill Hay	Winner of the Calder Trophy 1961	Succeeded by Bobby Rousseau
Preceded by Red Kelly	Winner of the Lady Byng Trophy 1962, 1963	Succeeded by Ken Wharram

Persondata
Name	Keon, Dave
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 22, 1940
Place of birth	Rouyn-Noranda, PQ, CAN
Date of death
Place of death