Had it been possible, Bill Keenan would have given his tutu, tights and bloody socks a fist bump. His injured ballerina costume had grabbed the attention of Olivia MacKinnon, an actual ballerina dressed as Barbie, during a 2019 Halloween party to the point that the pretend dancer and real one chatted for 15 pleasant minutes.Keenan excused himself to go to the bathroom, primarily to touch up his tutu. He reemerged, eager to extend the conversation. He saw MacKinnon talking to another man.It was her boyfriend.“The kick was not to the head,” Keenan recalls. “It was a sucker punch to the midsection.”Seven years later, though, Keenan and Olivia MacKinnon, the ballerina who caught his eye, are married.Were this a romance novel’s last pages, Keenan would have reached the term known in the industry as HEA.In his previous life, Keenan, a former Harvard hockey player, did not experience Happily Ever After on the ice. But HEA is central to the collision of life, love, family and ambition that steered Keenan to his current and improbable job title: hockey romance novelist.The way Keenan, now 40, remembers it, he was a slam-dunk No. 1 center from Learn to Play through bantam, good for six goals a game.The New York native was winning tournament games with Jonathan Quick as his goalie and former NHL first-rounders Rob Schremp and Matt Lashoff as teammates.The Connecticut Yankees, featuring future NHL goalie Jonathan Quick (front) and future hockey romance novelist Bill Keenan (directly above Quick’s left arm), pose for a team photo after a tournament win in 1998. (Courtesy of Bill Keenan)By juniors, with goals harder to come by, the right-shot forward considered himself more of a second-line playmaker.As a collegian, Keenan was an energy player. He appeared in six career games for the Crimson in 2005-06 and 2006-07.After a journeyman’s transition to European pro, Keenan could read the writing on the wall. He retired in 2012 when he was 26. He earned his MBA from Columbia Business School in 2016.“Once you become the good guy in the room,” Keenan says with a laugh, “you realize the door’s probably your next step.”Bill Keenan knew his pro hockey days were limited when he became “the good guy in the room.” (Courtesy of Reimund Schuster)As painful as it was for Keenan to fall short of his NHL dream, he enjoyed sharing his journey in a memoir published in 2016, called “Odd Man Rush.”Four years later, Keenan was back at it, publishing “Discussion Materials.” “Odd Man Rush” had explored a lifetime passion. His second book, in which he chronicled his misery as a Deutsche Bank investment banker, was a 180-degree turn.“One was through something I loved. One was through something I hated,” Keenan says. “Those are great vantage points because what they share in common is they will elicit a strong reaction. Loving and hating something, you’re going to be endlessly in pursuit of the thing you love and desperate to move on from the thing you hate.”