Gordon Blanchard "Iron Duke" Keats (March 1, 1895 – January 16, 1972) was a Canadian professional ice hockey centre who played for the Toronto Blueshirts of the National Hockey Association (NHA), Edmonton Eskimos of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) and the Boston Bruins, Detroit Cougars and Chicago Black Hawks of the National Hockey League (NHL) between 1915 and 1929. He was most famous for his time in the WCHL where he was named a First-Team All-Star by the league in each of its five seasons of existence. He won the league championship and appeared in the 1923 Stanley Cup Final with the Eskimos.
Duke Keats was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958.
Playing career
Keats was born in Montreal, Quebec, and at a young age moved with his family to North Bay, Ontario, where he was given his nickname of "Duke" at the age of six. He joined the Cobalt Mining League at the age of 14, and three years later was being paid $75 a week to star in the league. He joined the NHA's Toronto Blueshirts in 1915 and finished fifth in league scoring that year. After playing part of a second season with Toronto in 1916–17, he enlisted in June 1916 in the Canadian military as a member of the 228th Battalion as part of the First World War. The 228th had played in the NHA during 1916–17, but as Keats was still a member of the Blueshirts his superiors saw that he was unavailable for any games. He left for the United Kingdom on February 19, 1917. Overseas the 228th was reconstituted into the 6th Battalion, Canadian Railway Troops. On January 10, 1918, Keats was sentenced to 14 days' field punishment for drunkenness, but otherwise had no noteworthy events during his time in the war, and by March 1919 he was back in Canada. The team officially turned professional when it helped form the WCHL in 1921 with Keats as the league's greatest star. The Eskimos again finished with the league's top record in 1922–23, and again faced the Regina Capitals in the final. The Eskimos avenged the previous season as Keats scored the championship winning goal in overtime of the second game. Keats and the Eskimos went on to lose the 1923 Stanley Cup Finals to the Ottawa Senators. Keats began the following season in Detroit but was suspended early in the season after swinging his stick at a spectator in Chicago who was heckling him. He missed three weeks of play as a result. The day after his reinstatement, the Cougars sent him to the Chicago Black Hawks for Gord Fraser and $5,000 cash. He played two seasons before retiring as a player.
Keats was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958, and into the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame in 1964.
Duke Keats, whilst first making his way into the hockey circuit in the Cobalt Mines Hockey League in Northeastern Ontario in the early to mid 1910s, started out his playing career as a defenceman, but he would later switch to forward where he would find himself on the centre ice position.
Montreal Canadiens head coach and former player Dick Irvin, in a 1952 Dink Carroll column in the Montreal Gazette, claimed that Keats was the best playmaker he had ever seen, besting out Boston Bruins centre forward Bill Cowley. Irvin, who had played against Keats in the WCHL in the early 1920s, claimed that Keats was slow on his skates but that he was so strong at holding onto the puck, and such a great stickhandler, that he could wait out until his wingers were in the right position to receive his passes, and then put it right on one of their stick blades.