The rehabilitation of Sheldon Keefe is nearly complete.

If life is really about second chances, the 34-year-old Keefe asked for one, and has surely received it. If he wasn’t exactly a hockey pariah, he certainly associated with and supported scheming, hard-hearted men who were involved in some of the ugliest hockey-related incidents in recent times.

Today, while not exactly on top of the world, he has divested himself of those relationships and has a promising future in the game again. He’s emerged as one of the brightest coaching prospects in the sport, the leader of the flashy Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League, the highest scoring junior outfit in the land and the country’s No. 1 ranked squad.

How bright? Well, given that Kyle Dubas, assistant GM of the Maple Leafs, was the one who gave him new life in the game and remains an unabashed booster, it’s reasonable to anticipate that Keefe’s name will be coming up in connection with Toronto’s struggling NHL franchise in the coming months when names are raised for coaching positions in the organization.

For now, he’s a coach in pursuit of the famed Memorial Cup this spring, something his team can only compete for in Quebec City if it wins four playoff rounds, and the OHL championship first.

Heavily influenced by Dubas, formerly the Soo’s general manager, and his belief in the wave of analytical thinking sweeping over the sport, Keefe has produced a thinking man’s hockey team that relies on skill and speed less than muscle and aggression.

Given that he wasn’t that kind of player himself, the transformation is fascinating.

“I was able to put up good offensive numbers, but I was very much a straight-ahead player who relied on outworking opposition, not a guy who saw the ice particularly well,” Keefe says. “I relied on hard work, was probably over-reliant on physicality and being a pest.

“I’ve changed my outlook on the game quite a bit over the past few years.”

That’s probably the least of how Keefe has changed his thinking. If the name rings a bell, it was 15 years ago when he was one of the brightest stars in the OHL, a scoring champion drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning. All of that, however, was clouded by his association with the odious David Frost, a coach and agent who put together a cabal of young players willing to break all the rules and thumb their noses at authority.

With the Barrie Colts, they hacked and fought and insulted their way to an OHL championship and, very nearly, a Memorial Cup.

When they did win that OHL title, Keefe famously refused to shake the hand of league commissioner David Branch.

“This must burn your ass,” he sneered at Branch. It’s one of many things from that time he regrets.

“I’ve had the great fortune to shake David Branch’s hand a number of times since I’ve been back in OHL, something I’m very grateful for,” says Keefe. “If we were able to win the OHL again, I’d be certain go out of my way to shake his hand.”

Frost became one of the most notorious characters in the sport for his involvement in the incarceration of Mike Danton (Jefferson), and later for being embroiled in allegations of sexual exploitation. Frost was acquitted of those charges.

Keefe has said publicly he broke with Frost many years ago, and a phone call “would not be welcome.” Danton played two years at St. Mary’s University after being released following his conviction on charges of trying to arrange for someone to murder Frost. He is currently playing pro hockey in Poland.

Keefe was never implicated in any crime. But his reputation was thoroughly besmirched through those relationships, and when his NHL career died after 125 games, it seemed likely we’d seen the last of him in the game.

The road back to acceptance began with a willingness on the part of others to take a second look.

“I don’t take a lot of time to reflect, just keep pressing on,” Keefe says. “But there are times when I stop, think what I’ve gone through, think about what I’ve overcome, and been grateful for opportunities people kept giving me despite all the baggage I carried with me that would have prevented most people putting themselves out.

“Much of my motivation on a daily basis is to prove those people right.”

Before his playing career was over, perhaps sensing he was going to need a new beginning, he bought the Pembroke Lumber Kings of the Central Canadian Hockey League for $175,000, co-owning the team with Danton. Frost was part of that organization as a scout when the Danton pay-for-murder allegations broke, but was banned from the league in 2004. Keefe no longer owns the team.

Danton was arrested in July, 2004 and later convicted. He was paroled in September 2009.

Keefe, meanwhile, found his niche as a coach without Frost and Danton, leading Pembroke to five straight league titles and the 2011 Royal Bank Cup. He began to reach out for a new image, first through social media, rather than living in the shadows.

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“There was a time, as it was quite publicized, that I got caught up in stuff and my true self didn’t come to the forefront,” he says. “I didn’t want to lay in the weeds. I wanted to be the coach, to have my vision, to have it all fall on me and have my true character show up.”

He began to be noticed by Hockey Canada, and in December 2012, Dubas, then running a losing Greyhounds operation in need of a turnaround, hired Keefe to take over from Mike Stapleton as head coach. The controversial appointment was viewed with skepticism, and all the Frost stories re-emerged.

“Pembroke was isolated, easy to ignore. But for anyone paying attention, we felt good how we were operating the operation, and I felt good involving myself in the community as an owner. A lot of the Frost stuff was entrenched in Pembroke, so I had to overcome that,” he says.

“I just felt that as I dealt more directly with more families, eventually the word was going to get out there were good things going on.”

In Dubas, he found a kindred spirit, at least in the sense they were both interested in finding new answers to age-old hockey questions. The blue collar Soo, with a deep and traditional hockey culture, had been used to producing tough hockey clubs. But as Keefe began to be increasingly intrigued by Dubas’s fascination with analytics, together they began to find a different way of trying to build a winner.

“The biggest change for the Greyhounds was in the style of player which was appealing to Kyle. The way it worked out, it’s become the same type of player I’m attracted to and see value in. So our visions aligned,” says Keefe.

“For us, the value of speed and skill and hockey sense would far outweigh any physical attributes. We wanted people who have the ability to make plays and have speed.

“The foundation is the understanding that when we carried the puck over the blue line offensively, we created more offence,” he says. “Within that, we understood there was a correlation between carrying puck over our own blue line and how it influenced what we could do at the other team’s blue line, so we worked on different schemes and mechanisms to do that.

“After that, it just made sense we had to try and prevent the opposition from doing the same. I’ve enjoyed watching it a lot. It’s been fun to see the whole thing develop.”

This year’s Greyhounds were already a strong team, then turned into a powerhouse by adding NHL draftees Nick Ritchie, Anthony DeAngelo and Justin Bailey before the OHL trade deadline. They ended up leading the league with 110 points, scored 342 goals, had 10 players with at least 20 goals and scored more than five or more goals in a game 39 times.

They finished 61 points ahead of Saginaw, their first-round opponent in the OHL. Game 1 in the series was Friday night.

Beyond this — Keefe has also been appointed to be an assistant coach with Hockey Canada’s under-18 program — he insists he’s not trying to do more with his coaching career than he did with his playing career, or eliminate the warts from his life story.

“I never really related coaching to my playing career. That’s not why I got into it,” says Keefe, now married with two young children. “As I started to feel I was a good coach and there were things I could offer, I began to think about the OHL. I never thought about the NHL. But now I’m in the OHL, well, what’s the next step?

“Here in Sault Ste. Marie, I’m content. At the same time, I’m a guy who likes to push and continue to progress. So we’ll see.”

He knows any suggestion or evidence that Frost or Danton are again involved in his life will undoubtedly destroy his new career. He seems grounded, happy. He talks about his children posing for school pictures in Greyhounds uniforms.

He wants the rest of his hockey story to be his own.