The cult it was and the cult it remains: It's the only explanation for the tiny return to hockey, albeit on the periphery in a part of California better known for surf than pucks, of the disgraced former hockey agent David Frost.
And it really is a little-bitty comeback too: Among those now associating with Mr. Frost in south Orange County are some of those who were also part of his inner circle back in his heyday in Ontario.
How curious that like the former National Hockey League player to whom he was most notoriously linked - Mike Jefferson-turned-Mike Danton of the St. Louis Blues - Mr. Frost has adopted a new handle.
He is now calling himself Jim McCauley, by his description an innocent mix of his own middle name and his wife's maiden name.
(Yes, that is a really common practice among the beer-bellied macho set in the national game - taking the maiden name of the old ball and chain. Can't keep up with the number of fellows who do that. Thus, it is surely just happy coincidence that he chose a name - the late former NHL referee-in-chief John McCauley was Bridget Frost's dad - which unlike his own is regarded as an honourable one.)
Mr. Danton was the most intimately connected of Mr. Frost's intimates, a small group of then-promising hockey players who first encountered him as youngsters, fell under his sway, stuck with him, changed teams and cities with him and who with him took over a motel in eastern Ontario where they all lived, and who, in two instances, rode to his rescue two years ago at Mr. Frost's criminal trial on charges of sexual exploitation.
He was of course acquitted: When the alleged victims of a crime say the crime didn't happen, the judge has no options.
The two former pro players came to court in Napanee, Ont. in the fall of 2008 only after their lawyers made sure their names would be protected by a publication ban (which exists forever), refused to be interviewed by prosecutors beforehand and were defence witnesses.
The players' former girlfriends, who testified about the creepy-crawly level of control Mr. Frost exerted over the young men, weren't so lucky.
Because media lawyers successfully had challenged a proposed ban on their names too, the young women arrived at the witness stand knowing their identities weren't shielded.
Still, they had the intestinal fortitude to show up and testify.
Mr. Frost surfaced again in the headlines this week when a couple of hockey websites reported that he was back in action, allegedly teaching hockey and working at the Laguna Hockey Academy in the planned community of Laguna Niguel about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.
One initial report, quoting an unnamed concerned California parent, had Mr. Frost actually teaching hockey at the high-tech facility. But Mr. Frost has denied that, telling Helene Elliott of the L.A. Times that he is merely writing protocols for hockey training equipment.
For the record, Mr. Frost also repeatedly denied being the target of Mr. Danton's foiled murder plot, though he was publicly identified as such from the get-go by the U.S. Attorney's office. Generally speaking, his denials are so without weight they'd be carried off by the exhalation of a sleeping baby.
One of Mr. Frost's long-time associates was quoted resorting to that old homily about him being a fabulous hockey mind who has "put four people in the NHL."
Given the number of talented youngsters playing the game in this country, that's not such a stellar accomplishment, especially since Mr. Frost's name clients, Mr. Danton and Sheldon Keefe, respectively ended up serving seven-years-plus for the murder plot and owning a junior hockey club. Others made it to the professional minors.
In fact, Mr. Frost has far better bona fides as a troubled coach and influence on young people: He was suspended by the Greater Toronto Hockey League because he allegedly forged a signature on player release forms but there were also concerns about his abusive tactics; he was declared persona non grata by the Ontario Hockey League for his team's undisciplined play; he pleaded guilty to assaulting one of his own players in an April 1997 playoff game and he was investigated, though never charged, by the Ontario Provincial Police in connection with the alleged abuse of a 13-year-old boy who was photographed, naked or nearly so, tied with hockey tape to a bunk bed.
That's his real record.
At the 2008 trial, both the former pro players who went to bat for him admitted they called Mr. Frost's circle "the cult".
The only exploitation they acknowledged was their own, of their former girlfriends, whom they both took pains to portray as slatterns.
Perhaps, in the truly modern way of this cult, they too next will adopt the surnames of their wives.
I wonder if they all still get together, as Mr. Frost once proposed in an infamous letter to his boys, every Christmas. I hear Laguna Niguel is lovely that time of year.