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.''

Edmonton scouts did their homework in 1979 as the team chose Kevin Lowe with the 21st overall pick and Mark Messier with the 48th overall selection at the NHL Entry Draft.

The job of a scout, therefore, is more than just finding the outside skills -- grading a player on his skating, passing and shooting. It's looking inside of a player to find out just how much more he can provide.

Scouting is designed to be the lifeblood of every pro sports franchise. No one buys a Stanley Cup on the free-agent market. The common thread of championship teams is derived from drafting and developing players and watching those youngsters bring life and hunger to their NHL clubs.

Look at all of those great players the Montreal Canadiens drafted to help them win four Stanley Cups in the 1960s and six more in the '70s that Caron had a hand in selecting. And how about the job Bill Torrey did with the New York Islanders and Glen Sather with the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s?

But that was when the Draft was limited to 20-year-olds/or just a little younger. Now, players are 17 and still learning, still growing mentally and physically. I remember former Toronto Maple Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher once telling me: ''We are picking these kids so young that you might have a better shot at getting an impact player by putting names on a board and tossing darts at it.''

And this is the guy who picked Gary Roberts in Calgary and watched him become a 50-goal scorer and a cornerstone leader for the Flames, Carolina Hurricanes and now with the Maple Leafs.

Former Toronto Maple Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher once compared drafting future NHLers to "putting names on a board and tossing darts at it,'' even though he was responsible for selecting players such as Gary Roberts.

New Jersey Devils scouting guru David Conte wasn't part of his team's selection of Muller, second overall to Lemieux that year. But a couple years ago, he recalled that draft and the difference scouts have to face today.

These talent-seekers-extraordinaire have to look beyond what they see from a player on the ice at 17 and project him to what he will be like at 22 and 25 ... and 30. They have to often look beyond skating, shooting and stickhandling.

Jack Paterson, an old Detroit scout who befriended this young writer, once told me: ''Before the age of video and so many scouting advances, I remember thinking that if you had a row of scouts watching a game and you set about to trick them with distorted information, you could. In fact, I remember doing it with Marcel Dionne -- saying that I thought he was too small to handle the physical nature of the NHL. I walked from one end of the row to the other after making that comment -- and lo and behold, the guy next to me observed. 'You know something, Dionne's size worries me.' ''

Remember all of the jealously from certain NHL teams when Wayne Gretzky came over from the World Hockey Association? ''There were plenty of teams that said I was too small and too slow and that I never went back on defense,'' Gretzky, currently a co-owner of the Phoenix Coyotes, remembered at this year's draft. ''The intangibles often make the difference in what a player is really going to be in the NHL.''

Most of Colorado's success over the years has come from strong drafting. Dating back to the Quebec years, the Avs have chosen players like Joe Sakic, Alex Tanguay and Milan Hejduk.

We still talk about the gems uncovered late in the draft like Brett Hull (117 in 1984), Luc Robitaille (171 in '84) and Dominik Hasek (207 in 1983), but the truth of the matter is that the two teams we talk about most regarding the draft -- New Jersey and Colorado -- have company.

It's easy to correlate the recent successes that New Jersey (Stanley Cups in 1995, 2000 and 2003) and Colorado (Stanley Cups in 1996 and 2001) have had primarily because of great drafting.

Just look at the litany of Colorado picks like Joe Sakic, Owen Nolan, Mats Sundin, Eric Lindros along with Chris Drury, Milan Hejduk and Alex Tanguay along with New Jersey's inbred group of picks like Brendan Shanahan, Bill Guerin, Martin Brodeur, Scott Niedermayer, Petr Sykora, Patrik Elias, etc.

But former New York Rangers GM Neil Smith also offers the Red Wings (Cups in 1997, 1998 and 2002) as proof of what successful drafting can produce. And he's right.

''Everybody points to the Red Wings' $60 million payroll, but would they be where they are today without the production of Pavel Datsyuk and Jiri Fischer and Henrik Zetterberg?'' Smith said late last season.

Barret Jackman is a prime example of you never know what your getting on Draft Day, as the current Blues defenseman was considered too small at 6-feet, 180 pounds to be an impact player in the NHL.

One of Caron's last duties as a consultant for the Blues in 1999 was take a look at a defenseman in Regina named Barret Jackman. Just one look and "The Professor" could see the glare, the focus, the desire that we all see in the eyes of a Mark Messier, a Bryan Trottier, a Scott Stevens or a Steve Yzerman.

And that, my friends, is like the difference maker when you pit the skills of players and have a standoff.

I remember Oilers GM Kevin Lowe, who lived with the aura of Wayne Gretzky and the look of Messier. After watching a game between the St. Louis Blues and San Jose Sharks in early January in which Jackman stood up to Sharks tough guys Owen Nolan and Scott Thornton -- making them so exasperated at him that they both took penalties, while he stood there and smiled at them.

Lowe laughed and remembered Jackman's draft day in 1998.

"You could see the fire in his eyes right there on the draft floor," Lowe said, almost as if to say where were Edmonton's scouts when this guy was captaining Regina of the Western Hockey League. ''You knew the Blues had just drafted themselves a player who would soon become a presence on their defense.''

And yet, Jackman was considered too small at 6-feet, 180 pounds to be an impact player in the NHL -- considering the fact that 16 others were picked ahead of him in the first round.

But, even at 17, Jackman had the intestinal fortitude and confidence in his ability to play in the NHL.

''I think if you ask players I've played against,'' Jackman told me on Draft Day, ''they would say I hit like I'm about 6-4, 230. I like to make an impact in a game -- and whether I'm 5-5 or 6-5, I'm going to do it.''

Jackman ignored the whispers of his being too small to withstand the grind of the NHL and went out and captured the Calder Trophy as the NHL's Rookie of the Year after his stellar 2002-03 campaign.

Poise. Confidence. Tough to play against. Those are not the usual adjectives that come up about a young defenseman -- a position that everyone agrees takes years to master - - yet alone the guy who was chosen NHL Rookie of the Year in 2002-03.

Even the Blues weren't sure what they had when they selected Jackman.

''I wouldn't lie and say that Barret Jackman had the kind of skills that caught your eyes immediately,'' said former Blues chief amateur scout Ted Hampson. ''He is one of those players whose uniform number keeps popping into your memory, if you know what I mean. When the game was over, he easily won me over ... every time.''

That is called staying power -- a player who doesn't just provide a snapshot, but rather a whole roll of highlight reel hits, blocks, etc.

And it all came to the Blues last season -- four years after Jackman was drafted and after he went through the St. Louis developmental program.

If Blues GM Larry Pleau had pushed Jackman along, who knows whether the rawboned defenseman would have made the same impact in the NHL as a rookie.

''Was I as poised as Barret is when I was his age?'' laughed Blues future Hall of Fame defenseman Al MacInnis. ''I don't know if I even am today -- and this is my 21st year in the NHL. I just like everything about him. He's clearly an impact player.''

Everyone wonders where J.S. Giguere came from last year, but the Anaheim goaltender was a highly sort after commodity at the 1995 Entry Draft, where he was taken with the 13th overall pick by the Hartford Whalers.

''Honestly, I think you can look back and see that the top 15 players in most drafts have done just fine -- and that's a tribute to the way teams scout,'' Pleau said. ''It's just that many of those youngsters are put under the gun -- and teams are put under the gun -- to produce right now.

''Look at J.S. Giguere. Everyone wonders where he came from. Well, he was the 13th pick by Hartford in 1995. He was always highly regarded, even if he went from Hartford/Carolina to Calgary and then to Anaheim before he found his game. The point is: There's nothing wrong with the scouting. It's the win-now situations they go through and the impatience that need to be questioned.''

The teams that are most patient wind up with players who have an upside like Jackman.

Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. He writes a column for each issue of Impact!