Red of the Blues

When the National Hockey League created a new division made up of six expansion teams last season, cynical fans talked of the "dogmeat wing" or the "humpty loop." The derisive epithets disappeared when the upstart St. Louis Blues won the West Division playoffs, then forced the vaunted Montreal Canadiens into two overtime games before losing the Stanley Cup. St. Louis rooters can document to the day the start of their team's surge. It was the moment the Blues first saw Red.

Seven weeks into their first season, the Blues were last in their division and badly in need of some offensive punch. Coach Scotty Bowman made some quick trades and acquired Gordon ("Red") Berenson, a bench warmer for the New York Rangers. Berenson, 29, the son of a Regina, Sask., fireman, had all the makings of a top scorer. He learned his swift and violent trade as a boy, skating on the frozen ponds of his home town, but like many young pros, he had found it hard to make a dent in the talent-heavy NHL. As a teenager, he turned down several pro offers in order to earn a degree in business at the University of Michigan, where he was an All-America hockey player. Belatedly he joined the pros in 1962 and spent the next seven years on the fringes of the big time--never quite making the first team of the Canadiens or the Rangers, "I've known many fellows who had great potential," he says, "but they were just never given the chance to develop."

Every Move. The trade to the Blues was the chance Berenson needed. He came out of cold storage and turned into a fireball, scoring 24 goals and 30 assists to become the division's most valuable player. This season "the Red Baron," as the St. Louis followers have dubbed the 6 ft., 190 lb. center, is still going strong and, as a result, so are the Blues. They are a runaway leader in the West Division; to their ever expanding pride, their 18-11-10 record includes a respectable 5 wins, 9 losses and 6 ties against the veterans of the East. They lead both divisions in defense, having allowed opponents a miserly average of only 2.07 goals a game. That distinction is largely due to Old Pro Goalies Glenn Hall, 37, and Jacques Plante, 39.

As for offense the Blues have Berenson. Both Hall and Plante agree that he is well on his way to becoming the league's newest and most exciting superstar. Says Hall: "Red's got every move in the book and then some. He's big. He skates like an express train, and he shoots as hard as anyone in the league, including Bobby Hull."

Premature Gesture. Last week Berenson received the largest number of votes in his division for the N.H.L.'s first East-West All-Star Game on Jan. 21. Though he is leading the division in scoring, he rated the honor simply on the basis of one remarkable performance against the Philadelphia Flyers earlier this season. After scoring one goal in the first period, he netted two more in the second period to turn a hat trick for the first time in his N.H.L. career. "I dove into the net for that puck to save it as a memento," he recalls. As it happened, it was a slightly premature gesture. In the remaining minutes, Red slammed home three more goals to become the first N.H.L. player in 24 years to score six times in a single game.

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