For some kids in Regina, Saskatchewan, a broken hockey stick met its demise in a garbage can. But Red Berenson saw it as an opportunity to continue playing the game he loved.

“I never had a new stick,” Berenson, now in his 27th year coaching Michigan hockey, said after Wednesday’s practice. “I’d go to the rink in town and … find broken sticks. I’d take them and glue and screw them or nail them together and be happy.”

Growing up in Canada in the late 1940s and '50s, Berenson never had the luxury of owning a $200, one-piece composite stick like his current players are fortunate enough to possess.

With the cost of sticks hovering around 50 or even 75 cents, the resourceful Berenson fixed any stick he could get his hands on.

But today, Berenson and his team don’t have to worry about purchasing hockey sticks, as various companies such as Bauer and Easton provide samples to every Wolverine beginning in the early spring — minus the freshmen, who are at somewhat of a disadvantage when it comes to picking out a stick for the entire season.

As equipment manager Ian Hume said after Wednesday’s practice, the University picks up the costs of the samples, with players testing out sticks throughout much of the summer. Some players will keep their old model while others will switch brands for any number of reasons “that may not have anything to do with the stick,” according to Hume.

In mid-July, Hume calls players to get their top-stick choice for the following season.

“My ultimate goal would be to keep all the players under thirty (total) sticks for the year,” Hume said.

Over his twenty-year stint with Michigan, Hume said that there have been those players who have been relatively easy to deal with regarding their sticks, but there have been a particular few who have been “high-maintenance” such as Jack Johnson and Chad Langlais, to name a few.

“My all-time stick nightmare guy, Billy Muckalt,” Hume said of the 1998 graduate. “He played in an era where guys were using wood blades, and graphite or aluminum shafts. If he didn’t score in the first period, he’d have one of the student guys put the blade from stick one into stick three, take the blade from stick three and put it into two. Then, put blade two into shaft one.

“He was a little high-maintenance. There might be some psychological issues going on there, but we don’t get into that.”

The low-maintenance guys? Take the “old school” Berenson.

Ever since he dug into trash cans back in Regina, Berenson has kept the wood stick in his repertoire, sometimes flip-flopping back and forth between the original and the modern one-piece composite sticks that most Division I players use today.

Berenson explained that the composite model is “much lighter” than your normal wooden stick, with players having the ability to shoot better with the newly designed equipment. But with the enhanced technology comes a moderate price, as some players can’t stickhandle as well.

“The sticks have a resiliency or a stiffness to them that when the puck hits them, the puck booms off them,” Berenson said. “It might help your shot, but it doesn’t necessarily help your passing, receiving, your playmaking and so on."

Sporting a wooden Reebok stick in practice on Wednesday, Berenson said he isn’t a fan of the more expensive and less durable sticks. He referenced two particular Chicago Blackhawks — Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull of the mid-1960s — who excelled using the wooden stick, though theirs were curved compared to Berenson’s straighter edge. He claimed that “they could shoot the puck as well as anyone can shoot now.”

And until Berenson finds a better, more suitable alternative to the old-fashioned wooden sticks, he won’t ask Hume for any new stick samples from Bauer or Easton representatives anytime soon.

“He’s holding out,” Hume joked. “He might be the only guy in the free world that’s using a wood stick right now.”