“Hull is Canadian Superman,” author Gare Joyce said in “The Devil and Bobby Hull,” a 2011 book about Mr. Hull. Describe the Ontario-born athlete. Hull’s life before and after allegations of spousal abuse and racism tarnished his public image.
A flashy, marketable player, scoring goals, sir. Hull was one of the NHL’s biggest stars during the Original Six era, when the NHL had just six teams in Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Montreal, New York and Toronto.
gentlemen. Hull’s dash on the ice got fans on their feet, and he scored 50 goals or more five times in a season while turning a relatively new form of shooting – the slap – into an offensive one. arms. He’s been on the cover of Sports Illustrated five times, unprecedented for a hockey player and mainstream recognition for the game itself.
He passed his skills on to one of his sons, hockey Hall of Famer Brett Hull, who scored more goals than his father. gentlemen. Hull’s younger brother Dennis, nicknamed “The Silver Jet,” also played with him for many years in Chicago.
In 1961, Mr. Hull and teammate Stan Mikita helped the Montreal Canadiens break a record five consecutive Stanley Cup titles, then beat Gordie Howe’s Detroit Red Wings 4-2 to give Chicago its first title in 23 years. The team didn’t win another title until 2010.
“That’s when I thought I’d have a bunch of these,” said Mr. Hull told Joyce about his one and only Stanley Cup win at age 22.
gentlemen. During his 15 NHL seasons with Chicago, Hull packed NHL arenas. He led the league in scoring seven times, a record that stood for 50 years until Washington Capitals winger Alex Ovechkin broke it in 2019. He led the NHL in standings three times and was a 10-time NHL first-team All-Star.
In 1968, Mr. Hull felt that his prestige was not commensurate with his compensation, so he retired in protest in an attempt to get more money. The Blackhawks called him bluffing and there was no better option, sir. Hull returned to the team on a prorated salary. He was fined and had to publicly apologize for missing part of the season.
This is the beginning of the end for Mr. Chicago’s Hull City was also the beginning of an era in which superstar athletes would earn millions.
“The name of the game is money now,” Mr. Hull told Sports Illustrated in 1972 that he was in talks with the fledgling hockey league, World Hockey, that would give him what he wanted.
With a lot of fanfare, including a big cardboard check, sir. Hull signed with the Winnipeg Jets as a player-coach for 10 years, $1.75 million, plus a $1 million signing bonus — far more than he made in the NHL. Other NHL players, such as Howe, also fled to the WHA.
At the WHA, Mr. Hull City won the title and top scorer, but the price of success was huge. Team Canada did not allow anyone other than NHL players to play in the 1972 Summit series against the Soviet Union.
“I wanted to play the most. But those big heads in the NHL decided to pay me back,” Hull later told The Associated Press. The rules change quickly, sir. Hull was able to compete in the 1974 Summit Series. (The USSR won 4-1-3.)
Later in his career, after the NHL acquired the WHA, Mr. Hull was traded to the Hartford Whalers, where he played briefly with Howe.
Unlike other star players who hung up their skates at the time and stayed connected to hockey, sir. Hull is effectively an outcast, with tensions with the Blackhawks over a salary dispute. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983, but he left the game behind to farm and raise cattle in Ontario.
Robert Marvin Hull Jr. was born in Port Anne, Ontario in January. March 3, 1939. He is the fifth and eldest of 11 children. His father, a cement company foreman and farmer, encouraged his sons to play hockey.
gentlemen. Hull played football in St. Louis. Katherines High School while playing hockey for St. Louis. The Catharines Teepees, a team of the Ontario Youth Hockey Association, Canada’s highest amateur league. Exemplary on the ice at a young age, Hull dropped out of high school and signed with the Blackhawks.
gentlemen. Hull has been a beloved figure in the hockey world for years, often signing autographs and doing charity work hours after games. But the incident on the ice paints a darker picture for the one-time Lady Byng Trophy winner, the NHL award for “gentlemanly conduct.”
He was married at least three times, and two of his wives accused him of abusing him. Some of his children said he was an absentee father and an alcoholic. In 1987, following a domestic dispute with his wife Deborah, he admitted to assaulting a police officer who was called to the scene. He was fined $150 and six months of court supervision.
He allegedly ranted to a Russian newspaper in 1998 that Adolf Hitler had some “good ideas”. Asked in the same interview if he was racist, Mr. “I don’t care. I’m not running for any political office,” Hull reportedly said.
gentlemen. Hull later insisted that the Moscow Times reporter had misquoted him.
“I am deeply offended by the false statements made by Adolf Hitler and the black American community,” he wrote in a statement. He reportedly filed a lawsuit against the Moscow Times and the Toronto Sun, which stood by his reporting, for reprinting of the interview. His attorney, Tim Denson, said the lawsuits were settled out of court.
In 2002, ESPN aired a “SportsCentury” profile documenting the incidents, along with allegations of domestic abuse. One of his ex-wives, figure skater Joanne McKay, is the mother of his five children, including Brett. Hull once hit her with a steel heel.
His daughter, Michelle Hull, became a lawyer who works with battered women, a career choice she said was a result of what she witnessed. Hull’s treatment of her mother, Joanne.
Still, the Blackhawks recalled the two-time NHL MVP in 2007, made him a team ambassador, and installed a life-size bronze statue of him and Mikita outside the United Center, where the Blackhawks are based. (The Blackhawks changed the spelling of the team name to Blackhawks in 1986.)
“If I had to do it all over again, I’d probably drink more,” Mr. Hull joked in his 2000 book “When the Final Buzzer Sounds: NHL Greats Share Their Stories of Tribulation and Triumph.”
Then he added: “I mean I’ll think a lot! Write that! Then again, thinking will get you in as much trouble as anything else.”