By Jeremy Rutherford (The Athletic)
In the early 1980s, Ken Hitchcock was the coach of the Kamloops Blazers of the Western Hockey League and an 18-year-old forward came to camp as a free agent.
“He would have made our team,” Hitchcock recalled. “But you had protected lists and somebody saw him in a scrimmage, so they put him on (New Westminster).”
Craig Berube played two seasons for the New Westminster Bruins, but Hitchcock liked him so much that in 1985, Kamloops traded seven players for him and another future NHL player, Mark Recchi. In his one season with the Blazers, Berube had 17 goals, 31 points, and perhaps foreshadowing his future, 119 penalty minutes.
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