Blog blast past: No place for homers

Belleville Bulls goalieMike Murphy, who hails from the Kingston area, capped his major junior hockey career today by being named the OHL's top goaltender for the second season in a row. From Jan. 5, 2009, here's a reminder that he might have won another prize.

There was no excuse not to argue on Mike Murphy's behalf a month ago — guilty as charged.

It is hard not to wonder, with the Canada-Sweden world junior final starting in a hour and our boys going in as underdogs (maybe even for real this time), how the Kingston-born Belleville Bulls goaltender might have done. Hockey Canada didn't invite the OHL's leading netminder to its selection camp. Its starter out of the Western Hockey League, Dustin Tokarski, has given up nine goals in the past two games. (One has to believe Tokarski will be fine tonight; it's not like this is Hardy Astrom.)

It is even harder to take issue without seeming hickish and dickish. What are you going to do — cheer for Sweden because Hockey Canada didn't invite the best goalie in the OHL who's from your hometown, and also cut the league's leading scorer, Taylor Hall, who's also from Kingston? Only a complete maroon would go that far.

It probably comes down to how junior hockey is followed and covered by the media. Who really has the legitimacy to argue for this player over that player, outside TSN's Pierre McGuire, ESPN The Magazine and sportsnet.ca's Gare Joyce and professional scouts. We're all Al Capp schmoes by comparison, even though the Contrarian Goaltender at the above-linked Brodeur Is A Fraud made a pretty convincing case that Murphy is outstanding when his numbers are put side-by-side with the other goaltenders Belleville has had across the past two seasons. Please keep in mind that includes Philipp Grubauer, who stopped 44-of-49 shots for Germany against Canada last week.

There's a fat chance that anyone other than a chap calling himself the Contrarian Goaltender will point out that Hockey Canada is prone to simply taking the goalies off the best defensive teams in the Western Hockey League. It's like fans, pun intended, are Stockholm Syndromed into going along with Hockey Canada's selections. How can you really take issue without looking provincial, or a hater who doesn't want to Canada win? Noam Chomsky, eat your heart out.

Murphy, by all accounts is the real deal, and while this will come as mewling by the wannabe president of the Mike Murphy Fan Club, it bears noting. Writing about junior hockey is already enough of a one-way ticket to obscurity, even by the standards of being a meaningless blogger. The way it works with this tournament, to echo the Jack Todd column from this morning's Montreal Gazette, is that it's very much "you're with us or you're against us," when it comes to Team Canada at the world juniors.

Chances are, if Canada should lose tonight — and please don't say this amounts to jinxing them — no one will say, well, they should have gone with Murphy. Tokarski will probably be fine, anyway.

They should have gone with Murphy. No one will ever know the difference. Sorry, Mike, for not saying it sooner. Go get that OHL championship.

He didn't, but he still had a hell of a run.

Vees for victory, Fronts for foundering

These are good times for a Kingston hockey fan.

The Kingston Kimco Voyageurs, after a 4-2 Game 4 win last night over the Oakville Blades, are a win away from the Ontario Junior Hockey League title. Kingston-born Mike Murphy has backstopped the Belleville Bulls, the city's "spring team" since the one actually located in the city seldom makes it beyond the solstice, to the OHL Eastern Conference final for the third consecutive year. (Is it too early to talk about Murphy leading Bellevegas in an OHL final vs. Kingston's Taylor Hall and the Windsor Spitfires?)

Meantime, over in a forgotten corner of the toy department, the Kingston Frontenacs keep on keepin' on. In the midst of a recession, with a big building to fill, celebrity coach Doug Gilmour, has been nearly invisible in the city as they try to sell hope for 2009-10. The club is also set to apply its faulty, no-account approach to the OHL draft in a month's time. They're drafting No. 2 and it's hard to screw that up. One beauty of sport is sometimes you can succeed in spite of yourself. That's kind of been the basis for GM-for-life Larry Mavety's entire front-office career.

Granted, bringing the Springer Frontenacs into a discussion about the Voyageurs almost sees to cheapen their accomplishment. Of course, if owner Doug Springer had ever given fans something to celebrate as he has on promised multiple occasions, the Vees would not seem unique.

On Kinger's sports show on CFRC 101.9 yesterday, TVCogeco and K-Rock 105.7's Tim Cunningham said you'd have to go back to the old Kingston Aces senior team of the late 1960s and early '70s for the last time a local hockey team had the city in such thrall. And Tim is an apposite observer of Kingston athletics if ever there was one.

The Vees have three chances to close out the Blades, beginning with Game 5 on Easter Sunday in Oakville. Every contest has been a one-goal game so far, since Adam McAllister sealed Friday's game with an empty-netter with 15 seconds remaining (although Kingston had 2-0 and 3-1 leads). Goalie Shawn Sirman, who has committed to play college hockey at Maine last season, made 38 saves. Oakville's one win so far, in Game 3 last Wednesday, required 19-plus minutes of overtime after the Vees had wiped out a three-goal lead on the road.

Words fail, really, and speaking of fail, there's the Frontenacs. As Tim noted, Gilmour should be "a lot more visible in the community ... he's a great asset and I don't think he's being used appropriately."

In other words, Gilmour has been a ghost since the season ended. That seems like a strange tack to take with the legendary former Leafs captain. An astute hockey fan might remember that overworked flunky Jeff Stilwell tried to blame the team's attendance problems on the recession during that farcical appearance before Kingston city council in February, when they were called on the carpet to (wink) talk about their marketing plan. Gilmour's presence, people were told, would help bring out more fans, so why he is not front and centre trying to help the franchise maintain its base of fans? People everywhere, although Kingston is cocooned somewhat since it's a government/university town, are evaluating their discretionary spending.

Season tickets for an OHL team which gives a contract extension to its general mangler (not a typo) despite having lost 99 of its last 141 games doesn't offer the necessary bang for one's buck. Oh, and they've gone 11 seasons without even making it to Game 7 of a first-round playoff series, let alone the second round.

A sizable chunk of people who have devoted their attention to the Vees for the past few weeks are probably the same season-ticket holders who were disguised as empty seats on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons this past winter at the Kingston Ratepayer Centre. They wouldn't mind some further reassurances that Gilmour is committed. He's shown excellent potential as a coach, but the point remains that the Fronts need a lot more than smart coaching before people believe in the franchise again.

Writing on sportsnet.ca this week, Gare Joyce said that, "... a few jackals in the Toronto media suggested that (Gilmour) was a publicity Band-Aid solution for a foundering Frontenacs franchise, one-and-out."

Joyce is in the know, but a fan's reasoning is that hiring Gilmour was a PR move if there is no evident sign of changes to the franchise's management structure. The second is there is no reason to speculate if Gilmour is in Kingston, hitting the hustings and trying to sell hope.

Meantime, the OHL draft is in a month. The Frontenacs could hit a home run, but they'll be swinging with their eyes closed.

Doug Springer and Larry Mavety, who has tenure despite the failures of the past eleven-ure, have a pretty sweet setup with the draft. Their out is that the scouts make the picks. Mavety just rubber-stamps their recommendations, so it's not his fault. Gilmour is now supposed to have more say over decisions on players, which raises the question of why in the name of Sam Pollock Springer has given Mavety a new three-year contract.

(Today's Whig-Standard notes that Daryl Borden, whom Mavety once chanced a second-round pick on, has backstopped the Brantford Golden Eagles into the Ontario Junior B championship. Once again, Mavety helps build winners everywhere except with the team which employs him.)

It could be that one report this week the Fronts were committed to drafting a forward with the No. 2 pick was erroneous. One would hope so, since that's a stupid approach. You don't draft based on the makeup of the club's roster. You're drafting high because the team is deficient throughout, not just at one position, so take the best player. The Fronts, coming off a 50-loss season, can use help everywhere. You can never have too many good defencemen, even as 17-year-old Erik Gudbranson and 18-year-old Taylor Doherty are both off at the world under-18 tournament.

The team could be headed toward another manifestation of their obsession with taking a "big guy who can score" instead of a top-end defenceman, even though the latter is a must-have in the OHL. In 2005, Mavety's scouts took Luke Pither (undrafted by the NHL, but having a good playoffs with, wait for it, Belleville) ahead of Drew Doughty, now a regular for the L.A. Kings at 19 years old. In '06, the scouts took Josh Brittain (a NHL fourth-rounder) ahead of future Atlanta Thrasher Zach Bogosian, who played in the NHL this season at age 18.

The Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds will take Daniel Catenacci No. 1, since he's a speedy forward and an Italian, which will play well with the paisans in the Soo. Kingston defenceman Scott Harrington, who's moved up to the Vees for the playoffs, will be available, as is another d-man, Justin Sefton from the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

It's not some ass-talker's place to say who the Fronts should take. Then again, it shouldn't be Larry Mavety's place to say it either. Long post short, the Vees are a win away from a championship, and it's not clear who's steering the ship known as the HMCS Royal Mavesty.

It has been 536 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston. Having three former Fronts on the Voyageurs doesn't count.

(The photo of Budd Light is not gratuitous. The character in those beer commercials is played by an actor named Ryan Farrell who once played provincial Junior A hockey in Calgary, whereas Mike Farrell -- same surname! -- scored the game-winner for the Vees on Friday. It is totally relevant to the narrative.)

Night of atonement...

Any hockey fan of a certain age remembers the fatal bus crash involving the Swift Current Broncos in late 1986. There will be a pregame ceremony honouring the four players on Wednesday, prior to the Russia-Canada game in Swift.

One wonders what this has to do with Gare Joyce's ESPN.com E-ticket piece from 2007, which argued that town had not done enough to recognize the victims.

Related:
Denial of death (Gary Joyce, ESPN.com)
'Four Broncos' to be Honoured at ADT Canada Russia Challenge game (press release)

Blog blast past: A Frosty reception in K-Town

Former hockey coach David Frost's sexual exploitation trial began earlier today in my hometown of Napanee, Ontario. It's been covered by ESPN.com. The author Laura Robinson is apparently going to be there. Not to claim any connection to this sordid story, beyond having played the odd hockey or ball game in Deseronto as a youth, but from Aug. 9, 2006, here's one of our posts about the reception Frost received when his spouse opened a business in Kingston.

So David Frost, the Rogue Agent and short-list candidate for sketchy character of the century, is apparently involved with a newly opened juice bar in none other than yours truly's adopted hometown of Kingston, Ontario. Fan-freaking-tastic. How lovely is that?

For the uninitiated, Frost is the ex-hockey agent who was so controlling and manipulative toward his clients and players that ex-St. Louis Blues player Mike Danton felt he had no choice but to try and have him killed.

According to one report, Frost isn't the owner or proprietor of this new juice bar in Kingston's downtown. Far as anyone knows, his wife is running the show.

Just like how, on paper, the Rogue Agent (the words of the investigative journalists at CBC's the fifth estate), didn't have anything to do with the Pembroke Lumber Kings, the Junior A team part-owned by one of his other "Brampton Boys," ex-NHLer Sheldon Keefe. Regardless, he was still caught by the fifth estate's cameras being around the team last season. He wasn't the owner, the coach or the general manager, but he was hanging around.

Fans who bravely came forward to talk to the CBC said he was pretty much up to his old tricks, controlling and manipulating young men through threats and intimidation. The kind of treatment you generally get when you join a cult.

This new Frost-related venture came to light through an e-mail that's been forwarded from one Kingstonian to another over the past few weeks. By the time it landed in my inbox with the subject line "slimy grease ball," it had been sent to about 100 addresses.

There's no telling how many more people might have forwarded it since then, or told people about it. Aside from leaving the names of the people and the business itself out, there's no ethical dilemma in revealing how Kingstonians feel about David Frost being associated with a business in their town. It's one man's opinion, sent to dozens and dozens of people who may be inclined to feel similar sentiments:

The 'new place' is billed as a nightclub, eatery. I have not been to this fine establishment and won't ever. I read an article in a local paper stating the proud owner is none other than David Frost's wife. The article went on to say that he has nothing to do with the business. I was downtown last night for dinner and who do I look over and see walking out of the [name of the establishment in question deleted] but the slimy grease ball himself. Interesting to see how long the business will last when people find out who is affiliated with it. (The italics and the link are in the e-mail.)

One of the initial set of recipients has told the original writer, "good call," adding "a friend of mine from work saw him (Frost) sitting in there when he went to check the place out a couple of weeks ago. he turned around and walked out. that guy gives everyone the creeps."

There's nothing to stop Frost, or his spouse, from trying to earn a living. A juice bar in Kingston has a chance to be a successful business, what with all the Queen's University students who always want to be trendy and never read the newspaper.

Still, what does the outrage of one e-mail tell us about David Frost, and what he did or didn't do to Mike Danton and his family? Danton is now in jail, his life ruined. His family, the Jeffersons, has had one son torn away from them and had a younger son essentially molested in a 2000 hazing incident where Frost apparently pointed a rifle at him. The whole sordid saga is shrouded in mystery, but Frost is there, always.

It says that the general public in the Kingston area, which unfortunately for everyone else Frost seems to have made his home base, is damn right to want to have nothing to do with anything that might bear this guy's taint.

The courts couldn't stop him, since he was tough to pin down, even though as far back as 10 years ago when he coached Danton with the Junior A Quinte Mohawks in Deseronto, Ont., people in that Eastern Ontario community knew something was very, very wrong, but were too intimidated to rock the boat.

A lack of oversight by the powers-that-be in the hockey world allowed him to run roughshod over players. Sure, there was disciplinary action and a court appearance after he allegedly assaulted one of his own players in full view of hundreds of spectators, but at the end of the day, the courts and the hockey people didn't seem to do enough.

From the time in 2001 that a psychologist turned over photos to the authorities that depicted child abuse against Danton's younger brother, it took the NHL Players' Association four years to remove him from its roster of agents. That's cold, hard fact.

The only group who could deliver something remotely resembling justice were the journalists, including but not limited to the fifth estate's Bob McKeown, a fellow alum of the Queen's Journal, Greg McArthur, then of the Ottawa Citizen and now of The Globe and Mail, Sun Media's Steve Simmons and ESPN The Magazine's Bruce Feldman and Gare Joyce (who also wrote about it for Toro magazine.)

Frost's wife is free to run her business, of course, but at the same time, people in Kingston have the power not to help it succeed by voting with their feet and refusing to support it. More than a few already seem dead-set against getting in line to sample any of the establishment's Kool-Aid, to borrow Danton's immortal phrase. Can't disagree with that for a second.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

GREAT READS: GARE JOYCE GOES TO SWIFTY

Many people in Swift Current, Sask., are understandably ticked off about it, but Gare Joyce's ESPN article "Denial of Death" about the 20-year anniversary of the 1986 bus crash which killed four members of the WHL's Broncos is a must-read. For what it's worth, this is Best American Sports Writing-calibre stuff, although Joyce has been honoured in that annual several times.

Having grown up "out in the country" and worked in some small towns, I know how I would feel if that article was written about somewhere I lived. That said, the current Broncos coaches and players surely knew that ESPN doesn't send writers to small towns in Canada to write "a feel good article," in Swift Current coach Dean Chynoweth's words. If only it worked that way.

(Thanks to Marc Foster's Junior Hockey Blog for the first link.)

ROGUE AGENT GETTING A FROSTY RECEPTION IN MY HOMETOWN

Here's something to brighten the middle of your workweek: David Frost, the Rogue Agent and short-list candidate for sketchy character of the century, is apparently involved with a newly opened juice bar in none other than yours truly's adopted hometown of Kingston, Ontario. Fan-freaking-tastic. How lovely is that?

For the uninitiated, Frost is the ex-hockey agent who was so controlling and manipulative toward his clients and players that ex-St. Louis Blues player Mike Danton (bottom photo) felt he had no choice but to try and have him killed.

According to one report, Frost isn't the owner or proprietor of this new juice bar in Kingston's downtown entertainment district. Far as anyone knows, his wife is running the show.

Just like how, on paper, the Rogue Agent (the words of the investigative journalists at CBC's the fifth estate), didn't have anything to do with the Pembroke Lumber Kings, the Junior A team part-owned by one of his other "Brampton Boys," ex-NHLer Sheldon Keefe. Regardless, he was still caught by the fifth estate's cameras being around the team last season. He wasn't the owner, the coach or the general manager, but he was hanging around.

Fans who bravely came forward to talk to the CBC said he was pretty much up to his old tricks, controlling and manipulating young men through threats and intimidation. The kind of treatment you generally get when you join a cult.

This new Frost-related venture came to light through an e-mail that's been forwarded from one Kingstonian to another over the past few weeks. By the time it landed in my inbox with the subject line "slimy grease ball," it had been sent to about 100 addresses.

There's no telling how many more people might have forwarded it since then, or told people about it. Aside from leaving the names of the people and the business itself out, there's no ethical dilemma in revealing how Kingstonians feel about David Frost being associated with a business in their town. It's one man's opinion, sent to dozens and dozens of people who may be inclined to feel similar sentiments:

The 'new place' is billed as a nightclub, eatery. I have not been to this fine establishment and won't ever. I read an article in a local paper stating the proud owner is none other than David Frost's wife. The article went on to say that he has nothing to do with the business. I was downtown last night for dinner and who do I look over and see walking out of the [name of the establishment in question deleted] but the slimy grease ball himself. Interesting to see how long the business will last when people find out who is affiliated with it. (The italics and the link are in the e-mail.)

One of the initial set of recipients has told the original writer, "good call," adding "a friend of mine from work saw him (Frost) sitting in there when he went to check the place out a couple of weeks ago. he turned around and walked out. that guy gives everyone the creeps."

There's nothing to stop Frost, or his spouse, from trying to earn a living. A juice bar in Kingston has a chance to be a successful business, what with all the Queen's University students who always want to be trendy and never read the newspaper.

Still, what does the outrage of one e-mail tell us about David Frost, and what he did or didn't do to Mike Danton and his family? Danton is now in jail, his life ruined. His family, the Jeffersons, has had one son torn away from them and had a younger son essentially molested in a 2000 hazing incident where Frost, among other things, apparently pointed a rifle at him. The whole sordid saga is shrouded in mystery, but Frost is there, always.

It says that the general public in the Kingston area, which unfortunately for everyone else Frost seems to have made his home base, is damn right to want to have nothing to do with anything that might bear this guy's taint.

The courts couldn't stop him, since he was tough to pin down, even though as far back as 10 years ago when he coached Danton with the Junior A Quinte Mohawks in Deseronto, Ont., people in that Eastern Ontario community knew something was very, very wrong. A lack of oversight by the powers-that-be in the hockey world allowed him to run roughshod over players. Sure, there was disciplinary action and a court appearance after he allegedly assaulted one of his own players in full view of hundreds of spectators, but at the end of the day, the courts and the hockey people didn't seem to do enough.

From the time in 2001 that a psychologist turned over photos to the authorities that depicted child abuse against Danton's younger brother, it took the NHL Players' Association four years to remove him from its roster of agents. That's cold, hard fact.

The only group who could deliver something remotely resembling justice were the journalists, including but not limited to the fifth estate's Bob McKeown, my fellow alum of the Queen's Journal, Greg McArthur, then of the Ottawa Citizen and now of The Globe and Mail, and ESPN The Magazine's Bruce Feldman and Gare Joyce (Joyce also wrote about it for Toro magazine.)

Frost's wife is free to run her business, of course, but at the same time, people in Kingston have the power not to help it succeed by voting with their feet and refusing to support it. More than a few already seem dead-set against getting in line to sample any of the establishment's Kool-Aid, to borrow Danton's immortal phrase. Can't disagree with that for a second.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.