THE LONG-LOST CAPTAIN
KEON RETURNS TO TORONTO Former Leaf takes part in photo but still shuns team
TORONTO •
“ The Leafs aren’t involved with it, it’s as simple as that.”
Thus Dave Keon explained why he flew north from his Florida home to take part in the unveiling of a limited-edition print featuring himself and the eight other living men who have worn the captain’s “C” for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In the photo, set in a mock-up of the team’s dressing room at its former Maple Leaf Gardens home, Keon is engaged in a seemingly jovial conversation with his immediate predecessors as captain, Ted “Teeder” Kennedy and George “ The Chief ” Armstrong.
The picture shows Keon with his back towards his six successors in the job — Darryl Sittler, Rick Vaive, Rob Ramage, Wendel Clark, Doug Gilmour and Mats Sundin. It’s a fitting image for Keon, who has shunned just about everything to do with the Maple Leafs since he left the team.
In 1975, a disagreement with owner Harold Ballard led to Keon’s departure to the upstart World Hockey Association.
“ All I’ve ever said is it was a business arrangement that didn’t work out, so you move on with your life,” said Keon. “I was a hockey player … I still felt I could play, so I had to go find a job somewhere else.”
Before he left, Keon was not just any Maple Leaf. For many, he was the Maple Leafs.
Eleven times he scored at least 20 goals for the club. Some call the 5-foot-9, 160-pound Keon the best two-way centre in the history of the game.
After leaving Toronto, he played five successful years in the WHA before returning to the NHL for three seasons with the Hartford Whalers, where he retired without fanfare after the 1981-82 season at age 42.
Thirty years and two ownership groups have passed since his departure from the Maple Leafs, but Keon’s enmity remains. That Larry Tanenbaum, a man with no connection to Ballard’s regime, is atop the Leaf pyramid makes no difference to Keon.
“ They’d like to say they’re different, but it’s all the same,” he said.
Now 65, Keon has virtually no involvement with the Leafs, beyond once attending a game with Ballard’s successor, Steve Stavro, and playing in a few old-timers’ games.
He has refused offers to be honoured by the club and, when the Leafs moved to the Air Canada Centre in 1999, Keon declined to participate in the closing of Maple Leaf Gardens.
Rarely an interview subject for the Toronto media, Keon talked a little about his life yesterday.
“I’m retired now,” he said. “I ride my bike, take care of my dog and try and play some golf.”
But when the line of questioning inevitably turned to his selfimposed banishment from Leafland, Keon stood back, arms crossed, and shifted uncomfortably while offering up his answers.
“I appreciate I played here and most of it was fun and I enjoyed being part of it,” he said of his days in the blue and white.
Pressed on why he chooses not to have such days as part of the present, he offered little.
“It doesn’t work for me,” he said. “It just doesn’t work for me, leave it at that.”
He knows his fans exist, and that some of them even maintain web pages urging him and the Maple Leafs to get together, but that is not something that will change his mind.
“It has nothing to do with the people, it never has been,” he said.
To his fellow captains, it’s just plain sad.
“It’s a shame, particularly if he’s still holding a grudge,” said Kennedy.
Now 79, Kennedy relishes his place in Leafs history and wishes Keon might do the same.
“I don’t want to say anything that sounds like criticism because it’s a personal matter and I don’t want to second-guess,” he said. But: “It’s terribly awful. It really is sad that Dave had the misunderstanding or whatever it was with the Leafs.”
Sittler, who like Keon had a run-in with Ballard that led to his departure from Toronto, returned to the Maple Leafs fraternity when Stavro and Cliff Fletcher took over in 1991.
“My feeling is I’d like David to do it for David, not for the organization, not for the fans, because he’s a great player and he should feel the admiration and the respect and the accomplishment that he has … from within the community,” said Sittler, who now works for the team in community and alumni relations.
“He obviously lives in Florida and he doesn’t spend a lot of time here and the fans would love to give that to him,” added Sittler. “He deserves it. It’s something if he doesn’t want it, but to me he’s missing out on a little because I know that the organization and the fans would love to give him their feelings of what his contributions have been and what he means to not only the past hockey, but the present hockey.”
Sittler and Kennedy were glad that by his presence in the private venture that is the captains’ picture, Keon is at least partially embracing his Maple Leafs past. Both held out hope he might one day join them in the Maple Leafs alumni box for a happy ending.
Don’t count on it.
“I would say never say never, but I would say it’s highly unlikely,” Keon said. “Things happen in your life and you move on.”