Keon enjoys being back in the fold
Maple Leafs legend still gripes that Toronto won’t retire numbers, but likes team-themed monument
TORONTO — Dave Keon watched his tribute video, blinked into the bright lights of a standing ovation and in a quiet moment during O Canada heard an older voice shout “Welcome back, Dave!”
“I certainly enjoy it, but I’m always a little dumbfounded by it,” Keon said later at a news conference with the daughters of fellow Legends Row members Tim Horton and Turk Broda. “Forty years later, there is this emotion pushed toward me.”
It’s not really a mystery, considering a half-century without a Stanley Cup has left a large segment of Leafs fans pining for the days when parades were the norm and Keon’s Leafs were the epitome of tough, two-way hockey.
“Toronto, when I was playing, was a great place to live. We had some success, fans thought a great deal of us. We wanted to carry on what had been done in the 1940s and ’50s. We had some success, we had some failures, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
Keon has just re-joined the family, but is quick to adopt the party line of rebuilding under president Brendan Shanahan.
“For a while (in the ’70s under Harold Ballard), it wasn’t a shock,” Keon said of the Cup drought. “Hopefully, the long term plan is in line and I hope we stick to it. Get better from within. When I played, that’s how our franchise was built, guys came through junior and Rochester. When we were good, most of the guys came from the Marlies and St. Mike’s. It’s probably going to have to be done through the draft, not blowing the whole thing up when it doesn’t go right.”
Unlike rejection of previous attempts to honour him, the 75-yearold Keon was co-operative from the moment Shanahan called. His old gripe about retiring numbers remains, but he approved of the team-themed monument in which he’ll be placed this autumn.
“I told Brendan I was honoured and if there was anything I could to help the ceremonies, I’d be happy to participate.”
The Horton and Broda families gushed their thanks to fans and the Legends Row selection committee.
“The game was his life,” Jeri Horton-Joyce said of the great defenceman, who lives on in Canadian lore through a doughnut empire. “He played until he was 44. He died in a car accident, but he’d probably still be in the game, coaching or as a GM. We all miss him a lot.”
Barb Tushingham said her father, the best goalie in franchise history, simply loved the game and would have been thrilled to get a statue 44 years after his death.