For me, this story starts in 1998. My parents surprised their 13-year-old hockey obsessed son with season tickets to the Ontario Hockey League’s (OHL) Barrie Colts and my family would go on to hold these tickets for more than a decade. 1998 is significant here because of the fact during the 1998-99 season, the Colts pulled off one of the biggest and most lopsided trades in junior hockey history, which ended up bringing in the dominant Sheldon Keefe to Barrie. Keefe was as talented as any player in junior hockey, with a competitive fire that was unmatched on the ice. The only problem was, at the time, the talented youngster had a ton of baggage.
Insert David Frost, his controversial agent who always wanted full control of all his players, even while they were on the ice mid-game. The Colts coach would call a play, meanwhile Keefe would be looking up to Frost to get directions. Someone I happened to notice as I attended more and more games. Frost would stand holding a white piece of paper rolled up and would use hand signals to call plays off faceoffs, or cycling tactics as Keefe and then linemate and best friend Mike Jefferson (Danton) would look up in between whistles like an over-controlling hockey parent trying to manipulate the outcome of a Timbits game. It was unbelievable when I first caught on and as my Pops and I started following the team on the road, there was Frost all over OHL arenas.
Keefe would end up getting selected in the second round of the 1999 NHL Entry Draft and would go on to lead the Colts to an OHL championship and Memorial Cup Final in his second and final season in Barrie. It wasn’t however, without a ton of controversy as the Keefe led team were labelled the ‘bad boys’ of junior and controversy even followed them into the Memorial Cup in Halifax as the team decided to leave the banquet early and the Colts captain decided he wanted nothing to do with shaking the hand of CHL Commissioner David Branch.
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These admittedly weren’t his finest moments, and something he’s grown from and addressed, which we’ll get to later. His then running mate Danton would go on to play 87 career NHL games but is much more known for the fact he had enough of his controlling agent and got caught trying to plot the murder of Frost just four years later. A lot to take in, I know, so let’s fast forward to the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Referee Wes McCauley’s Unconscious Bias Towards Toronto Maple Leafs
It’s time to tie referee Wes McCauley into this wild story that dates back over two decades. McCauley was recently selected as one of the two officials to work the Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning’s opening round series and flat out should not have been.
McCauley is Frost’s brother-in-law and the two are reportedly very close friends. And with the layered and unsettling background between Frost and Keefe, this is something the NHL missed the mark on in a major way.
Frost was essentially blacklisted out of any and everything to do with hockey in Canada and had to go down to California and use a fake name ‘Jim McCauley’, just to try and find some work on the ice and more hockey players to try and control.
All any NHL fan wants is a fairly and equitably called game and when you have this type of connection, it’s hard for me to say that’s actually going to be the case. The team isn’t going to use it as an excuse, and frankly the officiating during Game 1 was dicey at times but the Leafs shot themselves in their own feet, especially Michael Bunting.
Regardless, the NHL seriously missed the boat here. They flat out should not have put McCauley in the series at all, and it’s extremely disappointing this is the case.
Keefe Likely Won’t Address McCauley/Frost Ties, and Rightfully So
Don’t expect to hear Coach Keefe bring up this wild life triangle during the playoffs, or ever, at this point, as he’s moved on. As a member of the Sault St Marie Greyhounds coaching staff in 2014, Keefe would connect with hockey insider Bob McKenzie and discussed his many regrets and his newfound second chance in the game. Keefe had this to say: “I regret a lot of things. Everything, really. Just around who I was when I played junior hockey, all of that in general—a lot of incidents, how we acted, how we conducted ourselves…the truth is, I lost years of my life, especially how I lived in isolation, so focused on the task. I lost years of my life, I really did”.
The Maple Leafs need to take on the character of their bench boss and find a way to hit the reset button before things get out of hand early against the Lightning. The task now for Keefe is to get his Maple Leafs team to bounce back in a major way in Game 2 and don’t expect to see the Leafs coach make any of this about him or his checkered past. Let’s hope McCauley and his whistle are on the same page, should another opportunity arise.