He doesn’t run from his past anymore.

Sheldon Keefe is well aware of the dirt left behind, the arrogance, the skirting of the law, and his past association with the hockey pariah David Frost.

The key word, in his mind, is “past.”

He says he doesn’t associate with Frost anymore. He says he hasn’t associated with him in years. The new coach of the Toronto Marlies said he needed a clean break while coaching in Pembroke to learn about himself, to begin a new career as a coach, to become an adult and have his true character come out.

He was an audacious misfit as a junior player, rude and skilled. He was a wasted talent as a pro — his general manager in Tampa, Jay Feaster, said Keefe’s career was lost because of the influence Frost had over him and his inability to act or think for himself.

“I hold myself accountable for that,” said Keefe in a lengthy interview on the fifth floor of the Maple Leafs offices on Bay St.

“I had an opportunity to play there and I didn’t take advantage of it. Had I performed better, I would have given myself an opportunity despite everything else. There’s no question I was significantly hampered by the Frost influence and all his interactions.”

When he looks back at his time when he was being coached, controlled, represented by Frost, what does he think?

“You could say embarrassed,” said Keefe. “Regret. It’s tough to think about that. I’m not proud of it. I don’t think about it very often anymore. I just focus on what I’m doing.

“Until I went to Pembroke (to coach), I hadn’t started living my own life. I was 26. It’s when I started to feel a lot of pride in what I was doing, who I was, what was happening.”

Thinking for himself. Acting for himself.

“My true self came out. My true character.”

He started looking forward, stopped looking over his shoulder. Part of him could always look ahead. But his name kept him in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Frost went to court on wild and explicit charges of sexual exploitation. Mike Danton, his closest hockey friend growing up as Mike Jefferson, went to court and then to prison for trying to arrange Frost’s murder. Keefe was among the people Danton contacted regularly in prison and, by proxy, so was Frost.

“I talked to (Mike), I visited him (in prison), no doubt we had a long history,” said Keefe. “But even prior to his arrest, (our friendship) had become less and less. We saw each other very little, especially in the hockey season. It was such a confusing time.

“I had no idea what was happening (with him) or where things were going. Trying to be supportive and everything and trying to come to terms with it all, over time, it was exhausting. Mike became bitter. I was trying to live my life and was growing up a lot, becoming more independent. I needed to separate myself from him.”

Before that, he almost came to a complete separation with his family, not dissimilar from how Danton became estranged from his own home. This is where the story gets troublesome.

In my book The Lost Dream, I detail younger brother Tom Jefferson’s recollections of the abuse he endured when he was 13 years old and spending some time at Frost’s cottage. Keefe was party to that. Photos were taken from that period. Tom Jefferson was absolutely clear in describing what he believed happened to him.

Years later, when Keefe wasn’t home, his mother found the photographs. Steve Jefferson, Tom’s father, believes the photos had been hidden. Keefe said if he was going to hide something, the last place he would do so would be in his home.

“I had photos,” said Keefe. “I didn’t hide photos.

“I had them at home for years. I believe the context around the photos has been misrepresented. And it was difficult to get my parents to understand what they saw. No question, it created a definitive rift in my family. They didn’t believe in me and they had no reason to believe in me at the time.”

So what would Sheldon Keefe say now if he had a chance to talk to Tom Jefferson?

For a second or two, he is silent. He is accompanied by Leafs media relations chief Steve Keogh. It is rare for a PR person to sit in on any Leafs interview. But, clearly, this was complicated.

“That’s tough,” Keefe finally said of talking to Tom. “That’s really tough. I would try and get a better understanding of what he was thinking, understand him a little bit better. Obviously, I’m only aware of the things I was there for. And the things I was there for didn’t happen the way he describes them. So it’s difficult for me to understand everything.

“Everything that happened with that family (Jefferson’s) is traumatic. But again, a lot of the stuff that I’ve read and heard (from the cottage) — that’s not how I recall them.”

Along the way, lives were damaged. Danton went to prison; Frost probably should have gone to prison; Tom Jefferson has struggled; the Jefferson family has struggled; and now here is Keefe, junior hockey coach of the year in Canada, elevated now to the position of American Hockey League coach, a highway drive away from the National Hockey League.

He is on the fast track, the one success hockey story left from the Frost years. But because of his problems in the Ontario Hockey League and at the Memorial Cup as a player, he wasn’t exactly welcomed into junior hockey. The one job offer he had came from a bold Kyle Dubas in Sault Ste. Marie. And the one job offer he had to turn professional came also from Dubas, now in the front office of the Maple Leafs.

Before this year, there was no lineup of any kind to hire Keefe. He is forever indebted to Dubas for the faith he had in him and for the opportunity that is now before him.

“I’m incredibly proud and grateful that people have believed in me enough to give me this opportunity,” said Keefe. “I went through this in a different way as a player. You finish your junior career and you’re playing in the NHL at 20 and you think this is what’s supposed to happen.

“But I’ve had moments in the last couple of weeks where I stop and think, ‘I’m working for the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Toronto Maple Leafs.’ I feel I belong here. I’ve been given a great opportunity and I look forward to taking advantage of it.”

The coach who influenced him the most wasn’t Frost: It was John Tortorella in Tampa.

“When I was playing there, things weren’t good. It was bottom-of-the-league, it was a country club, and John came in and changed the culture. He lost some people along the way, upset some people, but when they won the Stanley Cup — and I wasn’t a part of it — I thought that makes sense.

“The good, biggest thing I took away from him was to respect the game. And for a long time, I was a guy who had no respect for the game.

“In hockey, I always worried about me. If something didn’t go the way I wanted it to, it was somebody else’s fault. You need to learn to respect the process in this game and I didn’t respect the process.”

He now looks forward to training camp, to getting to know Mike Babcock better, to coaching and learning: The better he develops players, the more there will be for him. This is his new hockey family. His real family is together again, but hasn’t always been.

Keefe admits he has a fine relationship with his brother, Adam, a pro hockey player in the U.K., who maintains a relationship and has been business partners with both Frost and Danton. He says that isn’t tricky anymore.

“I’ve learned to separate the two,” he said. “We don’t see each other much, but we’re very close. I don’t talk to him about (Frost or Danton).”

He doesn’t mention either anymore if he isn’t asked about them.

But he no longer hides from the questions he once wouldn’t answer.

steve.simmons@sunmedia.ca

@simmonssteve