Duncan Keith's Hall of Fame election puts him in rarefied company — exactly where he belongs

New York Times

4 days ago

Duncan Keith coasted. The best defensemen do that, you know. It's how they play so many minutes, how they conserve their energy over the course of a game, a road trip, a season. They coast. They glide. They hover. During his 16 seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks — does anyone count or care about that last year with the Edmonton, because history won't — Keith logged 33,495 minutes and 55 seconds of ice time, more than anyone else in the league. So, yes, sometimes he coasted.
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But wait, no, that's not the right word for it. Keith didn't coast. He didn't glide. He didn't hover.
He lurked.
Knees bent. Shoulders tilted forward. Stick at the ready. Head on a swivel. Eyes scanning, always scanning. He was always coiled, always ready to strike. He could go from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye, whether it was to pounce on a loose puck in the offensive zone or cover for a teammate's mistake in the defensive zone. Few players have ever skated as effortlessly as Keith did, and even fewer could explode out of a standstill the way he could.
He could run a power play, yes. He could kill a penalty, yes. He could leverage his wiry, 6-foot-1 frame into surprising physical dominance in front of his own net. But Keith made his bones in a less glamorous part of the ice. If Wayne Gretzky's office was behind the net, and Alex Ovechkin's office is the left faceoff circle, then Duncan Keith's office was between the red line and his own blue line. That's where he lived. That's where he lurked. That's where opposing rushes went to die. That's where Keith used his quick mind, quick stick and quick feet to prevent breakaways and derail odd-man rushes. Whether he was skating backward in the traditional style or skating alongside his opponents before swinging into them and forcing them to the outside in the style he pioneered — literally changing the way the game is played — Keith killed plays better than perhaps anyone in his generation.
But it was what he could do after that which really separated him from his peers, which made him a two-time Norris Trophy winner, which helped the Blackhawks win three Stanley Cups, which helped Canada win two Olympic gold medals, which made him, officially as of Tuesday afternoon, a first-ballot Hockey Hall of Famer. Keith didn't just kill the play; he immediately resurrected it. He didn't just strip the puck; he promptly fired a perfect, hard, flat outlet pass to Patrick Kane, or Jonathan Toews, or Patrick Sharp, or Marián Hossa, or Alex DeBrincat, or any of Chicago's dangerous forwards over the years. He flipped the ice as quickly as he flipped that switch from lurk to launch. He was the driving force that made the entire Blackhawks machine go.
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Kane was the flashy superstar, all skill and excitement. Toews was the ferocious leader, all will and desire. Hossa was the two-way force, Sharp was the marksman, Brent Seabrook was the emotional heartbeat, Niklas Hjalmarsson was the puck-marked warrior, Corey Crawford was the safety net, Andrew Shaw was the fiery id.
But Keith was the engine. Keith made it all happen, made it all go. Indefatigable. Indomitable. Unbreakable. If Toews and Seabrook sometimes had to drag the Blackhawks into the fight, Keith was always there to push them forward. Never was that clearer than during his masterpiece, the 2015 playoff run when he averaged more than 31 minutes per game, with the Blackhawks essentially down to just four playable defensemen. He was a unanimous choice for the Conn Smythe Trophy that spring as playoff MVP. It was the best hockey of his career. It could have been the best hockey of anyone's career. He was that good.
Keith was tough, his famous toothless smile after taking a puck to the mouth and missing just a few shifts — 'long way from the heart,' as he said — one of the indelible images of the 2010 Cup run. He missed two or fewer games 11 times in his career. 'The heart of our defense,' Hossa said. 'His work ethic, compete level and leadership set the standard for all of us.' He threw himself in front of 1,896 shots during his 16 seasons with the Blackhawks, fifth in the league for that time span (his on- and off-ice BFF Seabrook, appropriately enough, was No. 1).
Keith was nasty, bringing plenty of snarl to a team known for its skill. He wasn't that big. He wasn't that strong. But he was menacing, unpredictable, and yes, as any Canucks fan will point out, a little dirty at times. He would have fit right in with the modern-day Florida Panthers. The 'ultimate competitor,' Kane called him.
Keith was intimidating. He loved slasher flicks, and his ever-seething intensity kept rookies in awe, cub reporters in a perpetual state of unease, and opponents on their toes. He once went ballistic on then-rookie Ben Smith during training camp after a battle in the scrum, pounding him into the ice with right hand after right hand after right hand in a shocking outburst.
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But Keith was funny, too. Asked what happened after that fight with Smith, he deadpanned for several minutes about how, when he was younger, he was basically in a roving street gang looking for fights. His penchant for slipping into a Scottish accent and quoting 'Braveheart' was a running theme of the 2013 playoff run. His teammates loved him, yet never managed to lose their reverence for him, for his obsession with nutrition, with sleep, with exercise, with squeezing every last bit of talent out of his game and every last minute of ice time out of his spindly frame.
These are all memories that will linger for generations. But that's all they are now, memories. This has all been written in the past tense. It's a sobering thing to see the present become the past, to see heroes become history. Hall of Fame inductions do that to you as a fan, conjuring up some of your favorite moments ever, but forcing you to confront the inexorable march of time all the same. For Blackhawks fans, that 2015 Cup run feels like a lifetime ago, but it also feels like just yesterday. With the franchise currently mired in an endless rebuild, one that's been years in the making and still has years to go, that past brings both comfort and wistfulness. The Blackhawks will spend 2025-26 celebrating their centennial season, and Keith and his core teammates surely will be ubiquitous at the United Center throughout the campaign. There'll be bobbleheads and a team Hall of Fame and slickly produced highlight videos that stir visceral memories of when the Blackhawks ruled this city and this league. It'll be fun, and it'll be bittersweet.
You can be cynical, sure, and look at it all as a mere cash grab, as a distraction, a shiny object to draw your attention away from the mess on the ice. You can roll your eyes at the thought that Sam Rinzel or Artyom Levshunov or Kevin Korchinski can ever be what Duncan Keith was, can ever mean what Duncan Keith meant. Or you can choose to be grateful. Grateful for the reminders of a time that either triggered or entrenches or forever deepens your love of a game, your love of a team. Grateful to have seen a player like Duncan Keith do what he did best, what he did better than just about anybody else.
Keith is the second member of Chicago's vaunted core to be voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, following Hossa's election five years ago. They'll surely be joined by Toews and Kane whenever they decide to hang it up. It's been so odd to see Kane in Rangers and Red Wings jerseys, and it will be so jarring to see Toews in a Jets jersey, just as it was so bizarre to see Keith in an Oilers jersey. But history tends to forget these denouements, these career death throes, these proud professionals raging against the dying of the spotlight. Boston Bruins fans no longer sweat the image of Bobby Orr in a Blackhawks sweater, just as San Francisco Giants fans don't waste time thinking about Willie Mays in a Mets hat. Keith was, is and always will be a Blackhawks legend.
Now, officially, he's a hockey legend, too.
(Top photo of Duncan Keith hoisting the Stanley Cup in 2010: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)