As Usual, Mike Keenan is Playing With Fire

Mike Keenan is one crazy, crazy man. But he’s also clearly passionate about what he does, so that’s worth something. Nonetheless, he’s interesting. I’ll say that much. When I said he could go postal on Kristian Huselius at any moment, I wasn’t kidding. We all know the two had a rocky relationship in Florida, but now that they’ve been re-united in Calgary, it looks as if Keenan has taken a different avenue of prodding Huselius; the silent treatment.

You see, the word out of Calgary is that Keenan has been seriously toying with the idea of putting defenseman Dion Phanuef (a very, very good young D-man by the way), on the wing. To paraphrase the good folks over at the Calgary Herald, that’s a huge slap in the face to Flames wingers Alex Tanguay and, you guessed it, Kristian Huselius. It’s good to see that Keenan is only trying to subtly undercut Huselius this time around. I guess it’s more of an olive branch than I expected. Nonetheless, this cannot possibly make Huselius happy. Observe:

It was one thing when Mike Keenan chucked ace defenceman Dion Phaneuf up front for a couple of power plays during Thursday’s game against Chicago.

But it’s something else for Keenan to be considering — or at least threatening — to give Phaneuf a regular shift as a winger… Phaneuf certainly has the tools to be an effective forward, but the gesture is also a damning reflection on the recent play of left-wingers Alex Tanguay and Kristian Huselius.

Stay tuned. This could get really entertaining.

Speaking of entertaining, here’s a YouTube of Keenan behind the Flames bench. Credit to Way Offside for giving us the pleasure of viewing it.

h/ts: Battle of Alberta, Way Offside _uacct = “UA-1868762-1”; urchinTracker();