Hockey Confidential (31 page)

The same, Keefe said, went for his relationship with Danton. They would still spend time together in the off-season, talk or text occasionally during the season, but with each passing year it was getting to be less and less.

Keefe felt like he was maturing, planting the first seeds of becoming his own man, but he noted it came with a price.

“Not having any tangible relationships [in hockey] outside of [Frost's] group, that really wore on me,” Keefe said. “So anyone who played with me from 2002 to 2005, I think, would tell you I was a good teammate. I know I was a good teammate then; I was starting to become the person I wanted to be. Admittedly, though, I wasn't nearly as committed [as a player]. I wasn't driven like I was before. I was maybe putting myself a little too far out there as the friendly, team-oriented guy. I lost my focus a little bit. That definitely hurt me as a player, but I felt better about myself.”

In the summer of 2004, after his “happy” season in Hershey, Keefe signed a one-year NHL contract with the Phoenix Coyotes. But the NHL lockout wiped out that entire season. Keefe went to play for the Utah Grizzlies of the AHL during the lockout, but four games in, he totally blew out his knee—MCL, ACL, the whole nine yards. He didn't know it at the time, but it was the end of his professional hockey career.

Nothing that happened on the ice in Keefe's six years as a pro was as life-altering as what occurred off it during that time, and beyond.

In 2001, the Frost story got national treatment when the photograph of Mike Jefferson's 13-year-old brother Tom, wearing only underwear and taped to a chair, surfaced and got into the hands of the Children's Aid Society. Frost and those who were in attendance, including Keefe, maintained it wasn't as it appeared, but Tom Jefferson said he was physically abused; among the allegations, he said Frost pointed a pellet gun at him. A year-long police investigation resulted in no charges being laid, but it still had a big impact on Keefe's personal life.

Up to that point, unlike Mike Jefferson with his family, Keefe said he had always managed to maintain a decent relationship with his parents, Brian and Roberta, but the sordid details and negative publicity arising out of the Tom Jefferson–Dave Frost police investigation, taken at face value, changed everything.

“My parents weren't trusting or listening to what I was telling them,” Keefe said. “I told them, ‘Don't overreact,' but they didn't side with me. They said, ‘Is that what was going on all those years [with Frost]?' What was being investigated [by police] and what my parents were saying, it wasn't accurate. Looking back now, I don't blame my parents for feeling that way, because there was such miscommunication between us. But I was very, very angry. This wasn't just about Frost; I was part of the investigation and it was wrong. I had to go through a lot of crap.”

Keefe didn't talk to his parents for the better of part of two years, during which he was totally estranged from them. But one day in the fall of 2004, after he blew out his knee in Utah, he picked up the telephone and called home.

“I was [emotionally] hurt [by the estrangement], I was nursing my injured knee, but my head was very clear,” he said. “I called my mom and we cleared the air.”

And he knows why he did, too.

“When I was younger [in junior], even going through that period where I didn't feel like I needed anyone, I was successful,” Keefe said. “I had my [Frost] friends, I still had my family and I felt independent, even if I wasn't truly independent. But as I got older, my hockey was going downhill, I got a girlfriend, I had a lot more time to think about things, and I realized I just wanted to have a really good relationship with my family. That was very clear to me.”

Keefe also, in the spring and summer of 2004, had to contend with the fallout from Danton's criminal conviction for what the FBI said was a failed to plot to have Frost killed in St. Louis, where Danton had been traded from the Devils.

“I didn't have much information on any of that, and what information I did have didn't make any sense to me,” Keefe said of Danton's arrest and subsequent imprisonment. But that was also the beginning of the end of Keefe's relationship with Danton.

Still, through all of this, Frost continued to be part of Keefe's life, even after Keefe reconciled with Brian and Roberta. Maybe not like he was in earlier years, but Frost was a still a presence.

In 2003, at the behest of Kevin Abrams (who was part of the Quinte Hawks' ownership group in 1997), Keefe used $175,000 of his NHL money to become the sole owner of the Pembroke Lumber Kings Junior A franchise in the Ottawa Valley. Keefe said the plan was for him to own it, but while he was still an active pro player, Abrams would run it. And that's how things started. But Keefe came back to Pembroke after his knee surgery in 2004–05 and rehabbed there. In January, he started to become more actively involved in the operation of the team, helping Abrams, even jumping behind the bench for games. Frost was, with Keefe's blessing, also involved with the team as sort of an unofficial assistant coach. He wasn't on the ice for practices or on the bench for games, but he was in the stands and around the team a lot.

With the NHL lockout over and his knee rehabbed, Keefe's one-year contract with the Coyotes had rolled over to the 2005–06 season. He was hoping for it to be a big year on two fronts. One, a return to the NHL for himself. Two, Abrams had assembled a Pembroke team that was ranked as one of the top Junior A clubs in the country and was hosting the Fred Page Cup, which was the Eastern Canadian championship and only one step removed from the Royal Bank Cup national championship tournament.

Keefe went to the Coyotes' camp, but it was disastrous. He had trained all summer in preparation, but he didn't do a thorough job with his knee rehab. He was able to get through the skating portions of camp, but couldn't walk at the end of each day. The Coyotes assigned him to the minors before he had even played a preseason game. He refused to report to the minors, asked for a trade, raised the possibility of being assigned to Hershey, but he knew the end was at hand. His knee was messed up; his dedication to getting it back to where it needed to be wasn't there, so he didn't actually play a game anywhere in 2005–06, and then made it official in the summer. He was retiring as a hockey player.

“When it came to a decision of still trying to play [pro] or going back to Pembroke to run the team, it was easy for me, just like that,” Keefe said, snapping his fingers. “I knew what I wanted to do [with his life].”

Keefe made that important decision after consulting with Frost and Abrams. Frost told Keefe he supported Sheldon's decision but would rather Keefe continue to play, but Keefe was adamant. He was quitting. Meanwhile, the Lumber Kings' 2005–06 season had gone down the tubes. Having Frost around the team hadn't gone well. Because of his reputation, his presence was attracting negative attention. Keefe said that at no time in Pembroke did Frost have—or try to have—a relationship with any of the players the way he'd had with the Brampton Boys, but he'd worn out his welcome there nonetheless. When Keefe sat down with Frost in the summer of 2006 to talk about his own retirement, Frost had already announced he wouldn't be back with the Lumber Kings the following season. That was not only fine with Keefe, but he knew it had to be, that Frost was toxic in Pembroke and would severely hamper, if not ruin, Keefe's desire to build a new life for himself as a junior team owner/operator and coach.

“[Frost] was originally part of the team with my blessing,” Keefe said, “but I wasn't happy when all the negative attention was coming onto the team and the community. I couldn't have that. [Frost] had to go.”

Little did Keefe realize, though, how quickly things in Pembroke would go from toxic to radioactive.

It was not lost on Sheldon Keefe that, at a time when he was
embarking on a new life of sorts—finally trying to assert himself as a more independent young man, telling Frost in no uncertain terms he couldn't be in Pembroke or around Keefe's Lumber Kings team—a giant sinkhole opened up on the road to redemption. The past—Keefe's and Frost's—reached up and grabbed Keefe, pulling him right back into the morass.

It was during the Lumber Kings' 2006 training camp that all hell broke loose. On September 6, after an Ontario Provincial Police investigation, Frost was charged with 12 counts of sexual exploitation involving teenage boys and girls over a period from 1995 to 2001. Keefe's past life with Frost—specifically what went on in Room 22 of the Bayview Inn in Deseronto during the 1996–97 season, was back in the news.

It wasn't good news, but it was big news, a national story, that ran on front pages across the country and was the lead item on all the network news programs. Pembroke was crawling with reporters and news organizations. Next to Frost, no one was more squarely in the media's crosshairs than Keefe. And the people of Pembroke were not happy to be drawn into Frosty's world. Not happy at all.

“I really thought it was all over for me [in Pembroke] before it had even started,” Keefe said. “Because of Frost, my name in town was mud. I was being shunned. Here I am, I'm in my first year coaching and running a business, with no experience, really, and there is this huge controversy in Pembroke. I'm in the middle of it all. There was a lot of cleaning up to be done.”

Perhaps the most misleading aspect was that the charges against Frost publicly cemented or reinforced the long-standing bond between him and Keefe when—at least in his own mind—Keefe had already begun, both emotionally and physically, detaching from Frost. The testimony at Frost's trial was subjected to a publication ban, making it illegal to report on who said what. But that didn't stop many accounts from reporting that Keefe and the others testified at the trial and that the testimony ostensibly ended up being on behalf of or in favour of Frost. Eight of the 12 charges were dropped, and Frost was acquitted of the remaining four in August 2009. Still, the court case and legal entanglements actually helped to solidify Keefe's estrangement from Frost. Keefe's focus, at that point, was on getting on with the new life he was trying to forge for himself.

“When he was first charged, I legally couldn't see or talk to him,” Keefe said, “and I had already really cut back on talking to him or seeing him anyway. We sold the property we owned together. That was the last of our ties.”

At the same time, Keefe was also moving on from his childhood friend Mike Danton. Keefe did visit Danton after the latter was incarcerated in 2004, and for a time, they continued to communicate by mail, but as with his relationship with Frost, it just ran its course and petered out.

“Mike became pretty bitter [with me],” Keefe said. “He didn't feel I was writing enough or supporting him enough when he was in prison. I felt as though I went through a lot of crap for how out of control the whole situation had gotten. I had a girlfriend. I had a business [the Lumber Kings]. I had started to live my own life and wanted to focus on my own life. I think he was bitter about that. Leading up to [Danton's prison] release [in September 2009, not long after Frost was acquitted on the four sexual exploitation charges], I had no communication with [Danton] at all. The last few years he was in prison, there was no contact. When he was released, I just decided it's not something I wanted to be associated with.”

Often asked to pinpoint the exact moment when Frost was no longer a part of Keefe's life, he used the date of his wedding to wife Jackie—June 28, 2008—as the official marker.

“Everyone wants to know exactly when I last saw or talked to [Frost], and I can't tell you, not precisely, because I'm not sure,” Keefe said. “There was no big blowup, no defining moment. Our relationship went from daily contact to weekly to monthly to a few times a year to nothing. I can tell you he wasn't invited to my wedding; he didn't attend my wedding. I know for a fact I haven't physically seen him since before [the wedding]. I know there was some sporadic [verbal] communication right around the time Danton was being released from prison [about 14 months after the wedding], but that was the end of it. My son [Landon] was born in 2010, [second son] Wyatt was born in 2012, and [Frost] has never seen or met my kids. We no longer have any ties. I was living in Pembroke during the season, living in Arizona [his wife Jackie's family is from Scottsdale] in the summers. There was no reason for me to communicate with him.”

There was, however, huge incentive for Keefe to not be associated with Frost in any way. From the moment the fertilizer hit the fan in Pembroke in September 2006, Keefe knew his only hope to survive was to prove to everyone he was his own man. His entire future in Pembroke hinged on it.

“I remember a meeting in town with some of the most influential business leaders,” Keefe said. “I was trying to get their blessing and [get them to] back me in the community, but it was a tough time. It was to the point where some of these gentlemen were going to pool their money to [buy me] out of there. I pleaded with them to have lunch with me, I asked them to understand my perspective, I assured them there would be nothing more to do with Frost, how I knew I had zero chance of success if I wasn't being honest. A lot of those gentlemen became major allies. One of them came to my wedding in Arizona.

“I knew I had to earn people's respect, literally one at a time. I had to be out in the community. I had to be visible. You know, it would have probably been easier for me to get out of hockey entirely, just live in Arizona and be out of the spotlight. But I'm competitive, I like hockey and I had what I thought was a wonderful opportunity. As much as I was aware of my past and the hurdles I would have to overcome, I looked at Pembroke as a place where I could, with my family, put down some roots. I had lived in seven cities in four years in pro, I played for two major junior teams, two Junior A teams—I had no stability in my life. That's how I viewed Pembroke: a chance for stability.”