The road is more slippery than the ice we just left at the Forum in Montreal, where the touring Canadian and U.S. National teams met in one of their pre-Olympic matches on a Saturday evening in January 1984.

St. Louis Blues General Manager Ron Caron is talking a mile a minute about the heart, soul and leadership that Canadian team member Kirk Muller showed him and a few things he didn't like about defenseman Craig Redmond. He raves about the size and skills that U.S. defenseman Al Iafrate displayed and the nose for the net that Ed Olczyk had.

Even the ever-present whirring of the windshield wipers doesn't drown out Caron's play-by-play commentary as we pull into safety (for me) at a small, but Crowded, parking lot at the Laval Arena for a Sunday matinee.

Inside we're about to see Muller's prime contender for the first pick overall in the 1984 Entry Draft --Mario Lemieux.

Sizing up Brian Leetch One of my favorite draft-day stories came in 1986, when the New York Rangers chose defenseman Brian Leetch with the 10th pick in the draft and then-GM Craig Patrick met the Stanley-Cup deprived New York media with charts from a bone-structure specialist to show that the offensively gifted 5-foot-10, 175-pound defenseman was going to grow to 6-1, 195. ''Craig didn't need that material to convince the scouts of how good Brian Leetch was going to be,'' former St. Louis GM Ron Caron said. ''Never mind his position, Brian is the best offensive player in this draft.'' And never mind that the bone-structure doctors were still wrong since Brian -- at full growth -- is now just 6-feet, 185 pounds. -- Larry Wigge

''He's big and strong and skilled,'' Caron says from our seats halfway up the arena. ''The puck seems fastened to his stick and the opponents admire him like he's Wayne Gretzky. But he doesn't play with the same heart and effort as Gretzky, does he?''

To know Caron is to love his passion for the game. But in the more than 20 years that he was a scout for the Montreal Canadiens and another 15 as GM of the Blues you learn that, well, he was sometimes impatient. On this night, he's getting impatient, because, for two periods, Lemieux has kind of floated around the ice and accomplished nothing. As for this scouting trip that "The Professor" has allowed me to take with him, Caron knows he will never see Lemieux show up when St. Louis picks around eight to 10 in the first round. Still, Caron actually liked the performance of Quebec defenseman Sylvain Cote -- projected as a mid-first-round pick -- better.

"This is a waste," Caron snorts. "Let's go."

We file out of the arena -- only to find the cars packed so tight that we cannot leave. So we go back in to watch the third period, a period in which Mario shows us what we came to see in the first place ... three goals and two assists and a dominant performance.

The car trip from Laval to Ottawa seems less dangerous after being dazzled by that superstar effort by Lemieux.

And now the game that Caron wanted to see all along -- and was willing to leave Super Mario early to see -- is closer to fruition.

The life of a scout can be lonely, obviously. Here today, gone tomorrow. Car to rink, with a few hotels and greasy spoon restaurants in between.

In two days, we saw potential first-rounders Muller, J.J. Daigneault and Redmond from Canada and Iafrate and Olczyk, Lemieux and Cote. Monday put us closer to the radar screen for the Blues -- and potential power forwards Shayne Corson from Brantford and Gary Roberts from Ottawa.

''Muller has better skills and a better work ethic than Corson and Roberts,'' Caron said. ''But Corson's toughness and Roberts' never-give-up attitude make them just as good. Best of all, they should be there for us to pick.''

When mid-June rolls around, Caron and I are back in Montreal for the Draft. Caron is operating a team in its first season after missing the Draft because the Blues were in limbo after Ralston Purina attempted to sell them to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan interests. Caron decides to trade his pick to Montreal for goaltender Rick Wamsley and a slew of picks and switches with the Canadiens.

"You know something,'' Caron told me late in the first round. "I found out that six teams saw what we saw in the first two periods of Mr. Lemieux at Laval -- disinterested and lackluster -- and they had Muller No. 1 overall. The rest of the teams obviously saw the real Mario.''