CALGARY -- Four nights before St. Louis Blues player Mike Danton was arrested in a murder-for-hire plot, he and his alleged intended target, agent David Frost, had dinner with National Hockey League Players' Association boss Bob Goodenow.
The three dined at the TGIF restaurant in St. Louis on April 12 after Game 3 of the Western Conference quarter-finals, Goodenow confirmed yesterday, shortly after arriving here for the Calgary Flames-Tampa Bay Lightning game last night.
The very night after their brief dinner, following Game 4 of the series, Danton and Frost had the "severe argument" that allegedly led the 23-year-old player to hatch the bizarre plot to have his long-time agent and father figure murdered by a contract killer, documents filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois by the Federal Bureau of Investigation show.
"I saw nothing inappropriate or unusual," Goodenow told The Globe and Mail yesterday in a telephone interview, "either with Mike or between Mike and Dave." The players' union boss said he was as "taken aback" as Danton's teammates when the news of the alleged murder scheme broke later that week.
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Goodenow would make no further comment due to the ongoing court case, tentatively slated to go to trial in St. Louis in July.
Danton, and a 19-year-old St. Louis woman named Katie Wolfmeyer who is his alleged accomplice, are jointly charged with conspiring to have "an acquaintance" -- originally unidentified but weeks ago named by prosecutors in open court as Frost -- killed at the hockey player's own suburban St. Louis apartment.
Frost had been staying with him for several weeks previous, and remained there when, on April 14, Danton joined the rest of the Blues on a team charter to San Jose for Game 5, which turned out to be the Blues' final match of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The alleged plot came to FBI attention when the supposed "contract killer," who was to kill Frost on the night of April 15 for $10,000, according to court documents, turned out to have been a part-time local police dispatcher who instead reported the plan to authorities.
Court documents, quoting from phone conversations the FBI had taped between Danton, in San Jose, and Wolfmeyer, in St. Louis, allege Danton was virtually begging the killer to do the job that evening -- and to do it in his apartment, so that "When I come back [from the West Coast], I'll obviously see him [Frost] there."
Danton was arrested the next morning, on April 16, in San Jose and later flown to St. Louis, where he remains in a Clinton County jail cell in suburban Carlyle, Ill.
Both he and Wolfmeyer could face 10 years in jail if convicted on both charges they face, but in a recent court appearance, during which prosecutors played three of 79 taped jailhouse conversations between Danton and Frost, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen B. Clark said the penalty could rise to as much as 24 years for Danton if, as is now alleged, he is ever formally charged with conspiring from prison with Frost to conjure up an insanity defence.
As a result of the remarkable access Frost managed to have to Danton even in jail cells both in California, where he was first held, and then in the St. Louis area where he is now, the agent, his family members and one of his other NHL clients were late last month forbidden by Judge Michael Reagan from having any further contact with the young man.
The two first met when Frost was a 25-year-old minor hockey league coach in Brampton, Ont., and Danton a 10-year-old player who was then known as Mike Jefferson.
As The Globe has reported earlier, that meeting began a process that over the course of the boy's teenage years saw him slowly pull away from his own family, ultimately renouncing his parents, Steve and Sue Jefferson, following Mr. Frost as he moved from team to team, and two years ago formally even changing his name to Michael Sage Danton.
At least two of Frost's other hockey player clients, and reportedly even his own wife, who is the daughter of a much-admired figure in Toronto-area hockey, are also to varying degrees estranged from their families -- part of the reason the coach-turned-agent is known in hockey circles as a controlling, even bullying, figure.
Frost was granted certification by the NHLPA as a player agent in 2002, despite his well-known checkered past.
By then, he had already been suspended as a coach by the Greater Toronto Hockey League for allegedly forging signatures on player release forms, and deemed persona non grata by the Ontario Hockey Association. In addition, he pleaded guilty to assaulting one of his former junior players in connection with a 1997 incident during a game.
The players' association has never offered an explanation of how Frost came to be one of about 200 accredited agents, its officials declining comment because of the court case and describing the certification process as an internal one.
Goodenow and Frost have ties that go back to the 1995-96 hockey season, when Frost coached the Toronto Young Nationals bantam team on which Goodenow's son, Joey, was a player.
As The Globe reported last month, Goodenow was considered an unofficial assistant coach of the team, and was often on the ice during practices and in the dressing room after games. While a former player told The Globe that Frost frequently berated Danton, Goodenow has said that he never saw Frost single out any players.
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