Bobby Hull

• Born: January 3, 1939
• Birthplace: Point Anne, Ontario, Canada
• Died: January 30, 2023

Sport: Ice hockey

Early Life

Robert “Bobby” Marvin Hull, Jr., was born in Point Anne, Ontario, Canada, on January 3, 1939, the fifth of eleven children. His parents had a farm, but his father was also a cement company foreman. His father’s own dreams of a professional hockey career were fulfilled by two sons, Bobby and Dennis, the latter playing for the Chicago Blackhawks from 1964 to 1978.

Bobby was skating on his first pair of skates at Christmas 1942, before he was four years old. Bobby recalls rising at 5:00 a.m. as a child and skating alone for hours. At the age of twelve, he played on the Belleville, Ontario, team with his father. He was already powerfully built, on his way to his full size of 5 feet 10 inches and 195 pounds. Bobby attributes his strength to farm work, especially chopping wood. He returned to farming and cattle raising after his retirement.

The Road to Excellence

The Chicago Blackhawks acquired Bobby almost accidentally. In 1951, scout Bob Wilson spotted him in a Bantam game at Belleville while waiting to observe a Blackhawk farm team’s prospects. One look at Bobby in action was enough. Wilson immediately telephoned National Hockey League (NHL) offices in Montreal to place Bobby’s name on the Blackhawk “negotiation list.” This action prevented other teams from approaching him. Wilson became Bobby’s lifelong friend.

Bobby was only thirteen when he left his family for the Hawks’ Hespeler, Ontario, juvenile team. The next season, 1953–1954, he led Woodstock to a Junior B championship. At sixteen, he moved to St. Catharines in the Junior A Ontario Hockey Association, the toughest amateur league in Canada and the last step before the NHL. In his second year with St. Catharines, Bobby led the team in scoring. Still, it was a troubled year for him. Rather than accept coach Rudy Pilous’s decision that he must shift from center to left wing, Bobby left the team for four games. Also, his first marriage, at seventeen, failed. Bobby’s second marriage, in 1960, produced five children, and his son Brett Hull eventually became a star with the St. Louis Blues.

The Emerging Champion

In 1957, Bobby signed his first NHL contract with the Blackhawks. That fall, he worked out with the Hawks at the team’s St. Catharines training camp. His two goals in an exhibition game against the New York Rangers convinced Coach Tommy Ivan that he was ready to move to Chicago. Completion of high school would have to wait.

Bobby’s first two seasons under new Hawk coach Rudy Pilous were not spectacular, but Pilous finally moved Bobby to left wing and the Hawks began to improve in the standings. In the spring of 1959, as a guest player with the Rangers on a European tour, Bobby scored 15 goals in twenty-one games. He felt this experience was a turning point for him: He learned to pace himself. In the following season, 1959–1960, Bobby, twenty-one, won his first scoring title. In 1960–1961, the Blackhawks ended the Montreal Canadiens’ five-year dynasty, capturing Chicago’s first Stanley Cup since 1938.

One explanation for Bobby’s rapid rise in scoring was the improved accuracy of his explosive slap shot. His style—soon to become famous—was an end-to-end rush at nearly thirty miles an hour to just inside the opponents’ blue line. From there, he would let go one of the hardest slap shots in the league. Goalies claim that all they saw was a blur as the puck rose or dropped unpredictably as it passed them. Another feature of Bobby’s game was his development of the curved blade, which added a slingshot effect to his wrist shots. In fact, Bobby claimed he scored more goals with this shot than with his vaunted slap shot.

In 1961–1962, Bobby scored fifty goals. That feat had been accomplished only twice before, by Maurice “Rocket” Richard in 1944–1945 and by Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion in the previous season. During Bobby’s run at the record, one goal was wrongly credited to Ab McDonald. Bobby characteristically never complained, although he was thus deprived of a record 51st goal.

On the ice, Bobby rarely lost his temper or retaliated, even when provoked. Opposing teams began to assign their best checker to “shadow” Bobby—the purpose was to draw him into penalties. Bobby did not succumb to the tactic; he reasoned that one cannot score from the penalty box.

In 1964–1965, Bobby had a great start: 35 goals in thirty-eight games. The “Golden Jet” was on a pace to equal Richard’s 50 goals in fifty games. A knee injury intervened, however, and Bobby slumped, finishing with a disappointing 39 goals. Not until the 1965–1966 season did Bobby begin to take some retaliatory penalties against his “shadows.” Still, his 54 goals and 97 total points were then NHL records.

Continuing the Story

Bobby scored 50 or more goals nine times in all, reaching a high of 58 in the NHL in 1968–1969 and 77 in the World Hockey Association (WHA) in 1974–1975. His Blackhawks finished out of the playoffs only once from 1958 to 1972. In each of Bobby’s last four years, the Hawks finished first in the division. In 1972, Bobby astonished the hockey world, and Chicago fans in particular, by accepting nearly three million dollars to play for the Winnipeg Jets of the newly formed WHA. He was “possessed of a pioneer spirit and the notion that he was improving the lot of all players.” The NHL saw it differently, however, initiating lawsuits that delayed Bobby’s entry into the new league. Others followed him, and Gordie Howe even came out of retirement to play in the WHA.

The WHA lasted only seven years, but Bobby’s Winnipeg Jets survived to become one of the expansion teams of the NHL. The Jets’ financial success was the result of the crowd appeal of Bobby Hull. Bobby’s son Brett followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a star in his own right with the St. Louis Blues. Together, they became the first father-son duo to score 600 goals and 1,000 points in the history of the league. After his retirement in 1980, Bobby became a commentator for the Canadian television broadcast Hockey Night in Canada.

Hull's legacy was called into question in the early twenty-first century amid conversations centering on past accusations from two of Hull's ex-wives that alleged he was physically abusive. Hull had also previously plead guilty to assaulting a police officer in 1987 who had attempted to break up an argument between Hull and his third wife. Following renewed discourse regarding Hull's alleged past conduct, the Chicago Blackhawks announced in 2022 that Hull would no longer serve as an ambassador for the team, a position he had held since 2008. Hull passed away at the age of 84 on January 30th, 2023.

Summary

In the days of the original six-team National Hockey League, when every roster was filled with the premier players in North America, Bobby Hull was among the very best on the ice. One can only guess how many points he might have scored had he played at his prime in the expanded NHL of today. Hull retired in 1980 and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame three years later.

Additional Sources

Ahmed, Shireen. “Bobby Hull Didn't Deserve to Be an Ambassador for Chicago's NHL Team in the First Place.” CBC Sports, 24 Feb. 2022, www.cbc.ca/sports/bobby-hull-chicago-ambassador-opinion-shireen-ahmed-1.6359930. Accessed 2 Sept. 2022.

McDonell, Chris. For the Love of Hockey: Hockey Stars’ Personal Stories. Richmond Hill, Ont.: Firefly Books, 2004.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Hockey’s Greatest Stars: Legends and Young Lions. Richmond Hill, Ont.: Firefly Books, 2005.

MacInnis, Craig. Remembering the Golden Jet: A Celebration of Bobby Hull. Vancouver, B.C.: Raincoast, 2003.