2B — February 17, 2020
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
In 2017, just after Mel Pearson was
hired as the Michigan hockey coach, he
went to Red Berenson’s house and had
what he called the best conversation of
his life.
The two sat on the deck in Beren-
son’s backyard and talked for two
hours, about anything and
everything. It was a beauti-
ful night, Pearson recalled,
and they sipped drinks.
A weight appeared to be
lifted off Berenson’s shoul-
ders. “After all those years
of hockey, I think he just
finally relaxed,” Pearson
said this Wednesday.
For years, when Pear-
son worked under Beren-
son as an assistant coach,
he had seen him in the
crucible, up close. They had
coached Michigan to 10 Fro-
zen Fours and two national
titles together before Pearson
left in 2011 to coach Michigan
Tech. Berenson would stay in
his job until he was 77 years
old, finishing his career with a
13-19-1 season, his worst since
his first year behind the bench,
back in 1985.
There’s always a conflict in
coaching. Be it recruiting, on-ice
performance, an off-ice issue
or something else entirely — it
always comes back to the head
coach. For 33 years, it always came
back to Berenson.
All that was over now.
A few hours before Pearson
recalled that conversation, Beren-
son sat at a desk in his Weiden-
bach Hall office, talking about a
packed schedule.
The night before, he’d played
hockey with the Michigan
alumni team at Yost Ice Arena,
on the rink with his name
inscribed on it, like he does
every Tuesday. On Wednesday
night, he planned to go to a
high school hockey game to
see one of his grandkids. On
Saturday, he’d play another
game in Howell, with the Red
Wing alumni team. On Mon-
day night, he’ll be in Detroit to
watch Michigan play Michigan
State.
Michigan didn’t play at Yost
this weekend, but at home games,
Berenson sits in the athletic
director’s box now, entertaining
donors or merely spending time
with his wife, Joy. He still feels
pulled toward the ice.
He was asked if it was nice to
have the stress off him without
coaching — without being in con-
stant conflict.
“Well, it was fine and I have no
regrets,” Berenson said. “So it was
good.” Then he moved into talking
about how he still feels invested in
the team. Really, the question went
unanswered.
He holds a job in the ath-
letic department, helping endow
scholarships in the hockey
program — a project he started
back in the late-1990s when
Tom Goss was the athletic
director. He’s close to finishing.
To some extent, he’s relaxed
more, but the Berenson who
Pearson saw that night three
years ago, after officially
handing off a job synony-
mous with his name for three
decades, hasn’t moved away
from everything, at least not com-
pletely. Pearson notices the com-
petitiveness simmering beneath
the surface, calm but clear.
“I don’t feel like I’m not in hock-
ey anymore,” Berenson said.
***
For years when Berenson
coached, he preached the idea
of a life after hockey. He was
born in 1939, near the end of the
Great Depression and he says his parents’
culture “was just survival.” Berenson
inherited that. And wanted to get away
from it.
In an age where education was
frowned upon in some hockey circles,
Berenson went to college, choosing
Michigan over Denver because, he said,
“some of the guys that went to Denver, I
just didn’t have a lot of respect for them
as students.” Years later, he completed an
MBA, driving back to Ann Arbor for class
the day after the Canadiens’ Stanley Cup
celebration parade in 1965. While hockey
players drank in the locker rooms, Beren-
son quit an offseason office job at Molson
Breweries because there was too much
drinking. He wore a helmet when doing
so carried a stigma.
Berenson played for 17 seasons,
coached in the NHL for six, then in col-
lege for 33. The last three years have been
the closest thing to a life after hockey
he’s had, yet last week he found himself
at a hockey rink nearly every day, eating
popcorn and watching Michigan practice
from a seat in the corner of Yost.
“I came back here and I had no idea
I’d be here 30-something years, but it
just worked out that way,” Berenson said.
“While I’ve been here, I’ve been able
to digest that feeling that this life after
hockey has already started, but I’m right
in the middle of hockey.”
This year, Berenson plans to get away
from everything the same way he has
for the last 50 years. He’ll get a group
of friends together, pack up the car and
drive north. They’ll spend 7-10 days in
canoes, portaging rapids they can’t make
it through and camping at night, isolated
from the rest of the world.
In an office filled with reminders of
his hockey achievements, Berenson’s
favorite photo is of himself, shirtless
and bearded, wearing sunglasses and
standing in a canoe on the Missinaibi
River. He picked up the hobby while he
played, discovering he had an interest in
the outdoors and, during the offseason,
real time on his hands to explore it. The
physicality of it appeals to him. So does
the remoteness.
He did it with the same group of three
or four friends for years, and as a coach,
he used to invite graduating seniors as
well, using it as a bonding event.
One year, when current Michigan
assistant Bill Muckalt went, his canoe
partner, Deke, tore his Achilles. There
was no discussion of cutting the trip
short. On the last day, Muckalt recalled,
Berenson paddled off into the Lake
Superior sunset. “I’m with Deke like, ‘If
we dump this canoe, we’re dead.’ Cause
the water’s freezing,” Muckalt said. Still,
they made it through each day, setting
up camp and listening to the Stanley Cup
Finals on the radio at night.
“That’s the worst real injury that
we’ve had,” Berenson said. “And yet it
wasn’t life-threatening. It was just, it was
inconvenient.”
He’s not looking for overly tough trips
anymore. Last year, the wind was in his
face the whole time and there were too
many portages. Some of the mainstays
who did the trips for years have dropped
off. Last year, Kent Brothers, an ex-player
who went on a trip nearly three decades
ago after graduating, called Berenson
out of the blue and asked to go again.
They loved having him. Berenson doesn’t
reach out to players each year anymore,
though. At some point, they didn’t seem
interested in something like that. “They
know that I go and if they want to go,
they can call,” Berenson said.
Two Saturdays ago, Luke Glenden-
ing came back to Yost to visit. His career
embodies the traits Berenson values,
the ones he saw less and less of as time
passed by.
Glendening came to Michigan in
2008, recruited as a walk-on. He played
four years, earning a degree and getting
good enough to earn an NHL spot as an
undrafted free agent. He’s in his seventh
year with the Detroit Red Wings now,
but when his career ends, he’ll have a
degree to fall back on.
Berenson paints Glendening in con-
trast with Josh Norris, another former
Michigan player who left after last sea-
son, as a sophomore. He’s with the AHL’s
Belleville Senators now, a minor-league
affiliate of Ottawa. Berenson doesn’t
understand why.
“Now, he’s probably happy in the
minors,” Berenson said. “But as an advi-
sor and his coach, I would’ve said, you’ll
get to the NHL just as fast by staying in
school. ... You don’t know how long you’re
gonna play hockey.”
Norris never played for Berenson,
though he was recruited by him. But the
old coach sees him as a part of a trend,
ever-growing, that started in the mid-
2000s, when certain players started to
come to Michigan thinking they had it
figured out. A recruit named Steve Guolla
once asked Berenson if he could wait on
a decision after being offered. Berenson
rescinded the offer, making the decision
for him. He wanted a group of four-year
players who wanted nothing more than
to be in Ann Arbor, lining up behind
each other for playing time. Things were
regimented, just the way Berenson, an
old-school coach who comes from an old-
school background, wanted them.
Unmistakably, Berenson is a man of
his age, both in how he handled his pro-
gram and in his personal life. He keeps
things to himself.
When Pearson’s father passed away,
he found a photo of him and Berenson
together, on an All-Star team in Hum-
boldt, Saskatchewan in the late-1950s.
Berenson had told Pearson he knew his
father. Neither man had said anything to
Pearson about having played together.
***
The current senior class is Berenson’s
last.
Once they graduate, there will be no
one left on Michigan’s roster who played
for him, only those he recruited and
called after the 2017 season, telling them
he wouldn’t be there.
He’ll lose something in that — it’s easy
to pick up on the way Berenson speaks
about his former players. He watches the
NHL constantly, and it’s hard to believe
he isn’t doing that to keep an eye on
them. Last week, he came into the Yost
offices and asked Pearson if he knew
Andrew Cogliano would play his 1,000th
NHL game on Thursday. Pearson had no
idea. But Berenson keeps up with these
things.
The last players with ties to his reign
leaving won’t end the connection Beren-
son feels with the program. Pearson,
Muckalt, volunteer assistant Matt Hun-
wick and player development coach Steve
Shields all played or coached under him.
When Pearson brings recruits in now, he
tries to make sure they meet Berenson.
He still comes into the offices to talk
a couple times a week, meeting with the
coaches or just with Pearson in an unof-
ficial advisoral capacity. Once in a long
while, he’ll talk to Pearson after a game.
No one feels he’s stepping on toes — the
staff values any advice he has, and he
doesn’t want to overstep. When Pearson
took over, he made sure there was still a
stall for him in the coach’s locker room.
“He’s got such a good way about him,”
Pearson said. “Not forcing or telling you
anything to do. You just start talking
about something and then you get into
some coaching or maybe a player, or if
you have a discipline issue, or maybe a
player isn’t playing up to their potential
or whatnot, how you deal with it.”
As for his current role, Berenson is
unsure when he’ll leave it.
“Year to year, I don’t have a plan,”
Berenson said. “As long as I’m healthy
and fit and alert, if it works for Warde,
and if it doesn’t work for him, I’m fine. I’ll
be fine without this. But I’ll still be a fan.”
Even though his passion for hockey
is as strong as ever, Berenson relishes
having more time to spend with his fam-
ily now. He and Joy have always done
trips in their AirStream, driving across
Canada to visit family, and that hasn’t
changed. Last summer, to celebrate their
60th anniversary, the family got together
and stayed at the Grand Hotel on Macki-
nac Island.
The island is remote and isolated, the
way Berenson likes it. There are no cars
— just bikes and horses to get around —
and the whole family was there, as far
removed from the hockey world as could
be.
ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
RED BERENSON’S