How an NHL prospect fell under a coach's unshakable spell">
The Bayview Inn is a bland brick building on the outskirts of Deseronto, a tiny town bordering Mohawk territory near the north shore of Lake Ontario. It's the kind of place where fishing buddies feel comfortable parking their gear, and out-of-town hockey teams like to roost when invited to tournaments at the arena around the corner.
Seven years ago, one of the rooms at the hotel was a meeting place for a few select members of the Quinte Hawks, a Tier 2 junior team on which Mike Danton was a rough-and-tumble player whose main job was to protect the top goal scorers. The role would eventually land him a job with the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League.
Mr. Danton, who was Mike Jefferson in those days, was one of the regulars at the hotel. On the nights the team wasn't playing, he would eat his dinner at the home of Elena Phillips, the motherly woman with whom he boarded, then head over to the hotel.
The folks who billeted the young Hawks players say the team was the most exciting thing that had happened to the town in years. But they had serious concerns about what was going on in that hotel room. There were girls, they said. And the players, although generally good students, would sometimes skip school to spend the day there.
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Mike, who was 16 at the time, would never stay out late, Ms. Phillips said. But she worried about how he was spending his evenings.
"One night, he came back and his face was all red and he had welts," she recounted this week as she sat at her comfortable kitchen table. "I came up the stairs and I said 'What's the matter Mike?' and he said nothing, and then he just went into his room and closed the door."
Today, Mike Danton is behind the closed door of a California jail cell. Earlier this week, U.S. district attorney Ronald Tenpas announced that Mr. Danton and his friend Katie Wolfmeyer had been formally indicted on charges of arranging a murder, an offence punishable by as much as 10 years in prison.
Mr. Danton's story has emerged as a film noir counterpoint to the gossamer fantasy of the NHL playoffs. With allegations of promiscuity, drugs and attempted murder for hire, Mr. Danton's case is unique, yet it highlights what some see as systemic problems with the modern game of hockey.
"There's something seriously wrong with the way that we approach the sport," said Ed Arnold, author of the book Whose Puck Is It, Anyway?
"A lot of people seem to have forgotten that it's just a game. A huge amount of pressure is placed on extremely young kids. And the money is obscene."
The criminal complaint filed in the Illinois court has led to widespread speculation about Mr. Danton's troubled relationship with his former coach and agent David Frost. In the document, FBI Special Agent John Jimenez says Mr. Danton became concerned during an argument last week that a male acquaintance was going to tell the management of the St. Louis Blues about his dissolute lifestyle, which involved drug use and promiscuity.
Although the male acquaintance is not named in the affidavit, police sources in St. Louis say it is Mr. Frost. According to the affidavit, Mr. Danton "broke down and sobbed. ..... Danton explained that he felt backed into a corner and also felt that the acquaintance was going to leave him. Danton did not want to allow the acquaintance to leave him, therefore decided to have him killed."
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The tale of Mike Danton begins in Brampton, Ont., back in the days when Mr. Frost coached him and a group of talented 11-year-olds on a triple-A team that was part of the giant Metro Toronto Hockey League.
Even then, observers say, Mr. Frost was demanding, controlling and manipulative, particularly when it came to his favourite players. Mike Jefferson was one of his favourites.
It wasn't until 2002 that Mike Jefferson changed his name to Danton — reportedly after a boy he met in hockey camp — swearing that he would never play in the big leagues with the name Jefferson on his back. Steve Jefferson, Mr. Danton's estranged father, believes he lost his son when he was 15.
