Keller is pictured with his wife, Rachel, son Kruz, daughter Cove and the Easter Bunny

By Regan Bartel

The Justin Keller story

Guitars, goals and glory!

Jul 30, 2025 | 6:00 AM

Being a 17-year-old rookie during a Memorial Cup season on home ice is enough pressure to make anyone tighten up. But for Justin Keller, music was the outlet that helped him breathe.

“Mike Card and I would fool around a bit on the guitar,” Keller said. “I had an acoustic guitar, and so did he. We would bring out the electric guitars too and fool around.”

Card, a defenceman and fellow Rockets teammate, shared Keller’s love of music and became a regular in those jam sessions. For Keller, it wasn’t about trying to start a band or putting on a show. It was simply a way to block out the stress that came with life in the WHL.

“It was something fun to do just to take my mind off the stress that came with hockey. We played one basement party show, and we are now in a 20-year hiatus,” Keller laughed. “We might do a reunion tour if he [Card] comes back from Germany.”

Whether or not they had any musical chops was beside the point.

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“I was singing into the mic, but I don’t know if I would call it singing,” he said. “There was a lot of yelling going on. A lot of loud guitars and drums.”

Their billet family’s young son took up the drums. Keller might’ve been the ringleader, but it quickly turned into a team escape from the grind of junior hockey.

“I still mess around with the guitar to this day. I have the equipment set up for my son, just in case he gets interested in it. When I look back, it was something we could do [with teammates] that wasn’t just hockey based. You could get your mind off the game and have a little bit of fun.”

Of course, Keller’s most memorable notes came on the ice. After a year in the BCHL, the Summerland product decided to join the WHL’s Rockets for their 2003–04 season — one that ended with a national championship. It took a bit of coaxing from then-head coach Marc Habscheid and assistant Jeff Truitt.

“I thought it was so close to home, and it was so nice of Habber (Habscheid) and Truey (Truitt) to come to the house and talk to me about playing in Kelowna,” Keller recalled. “And for the team to have the Memorial Cup, I knew there was going to be a scout from every team at every game. The timing for everything was perfect. It made perfect sense to go there and give it a shot.”

That gamble paid off. Keller scored 25 goals in the regular season, including one on his very first WHL shift.

“I scored my first goal on my first shift and on my first shot,” he said. “I remember it was no laser beam. It was on the ice, from far out, but it was nice to get the monkey off the back there.”

But his biggest goal came in the national spotlight — the 2004 Memorial Cup final. With over 6,300 fans packed into Prospera Place, Keller scored the game-winning goal in a 2-1 win over Gatineau.

He had also scored the team’s first goal of the season, meaning he bookended the year with a pair of milestones.

“That is something that Habber brought up to me in the year-end meeting,” Keller said. “That’s pretty cool being a younger guy. Habber and Truey put a lot of trust in me and I got to play a lot that year on the power play.”

Keller played most of the season alongside veterans Randall Gelech and Cam Paddock. That mix of young skill and veteran leadership helped Kelowna win with a defence-first style. The Rockets gave up just 125 goals that year — still a franchise record.

“Kelly Guard was the goalie and he was great. Not a knock against him, but Gelech led the team in scoring and it wasn’t a high number,” Keller said. “We would win games 2-1, 1-0, and as long as you were winning it was fun.”

Even with modest offensive numbers, the Rockets ended up where it mattered most — on top. And for Keller, the experience was bigger than just hockey.

With the tournament hosted at home, the team spent Memorial Cup week housed at Okanagan Resort on Westside Road — a place later destroyed in the 2023 McDougall Creek wildfire.

“We all had our own place at the resort,” Keller recalled, rooming with Tyler Mosienko. “Looking back on it, it was probably the right call to clear our heads and just have the focus for what we needed to do.”

As for the pressure?

“We had the mindset that this is only going to last just over a week, but it could last for the rest of your lives. If we bear down, focus, and not pay too much attention to the outside noise, we could accomplish something special.”

Mission accomplished.

“You look back when you’re a little bit older, and I am thankful for hockey,” Keller added.

“When you are young, you think everyone is being hard on you, but they [coaches] taught a lot of valuable lessons about hard work and determination, focus, and I can look back on it now as some of the fondest memories I have, and some of the greatest lessons I have learned. I take those with me today.”