Chicago Blackhawks legend Bobby Hull is introduced to fans during a convention in Chicago on July 26, 2019.Amr Alfiky/The Associated Press
Before Bobby Hull showed up, the NHL was long on workmanlike effort and short on rock ’n’ roll erraticism. Now that he’s gone, it’s returned to its former state.
But for a while there, Hull played hockey the way Led Zeppelin played arenas – the most interesting stories didn’t happen in public view, and few of them were the sort you’d want to hear in decent company.
One of the great pure goal scorers in the game’s history and its most notable off-season farmer, Hull bridged the gap between the NHL’s working-class roots and its jet-set aspirations. His career was full of ‘what ifs’ – what if he’d stayed in the NHL past his early 30s?; what if he’d been allowed to play in the Summit Series? The best testament to Hull’s athletic greatness was that despite often working against his own best interests, he still managed to be remembered as great.
Like many of his contemporaries, Hull was the sort they grew big on the farm. Born in rural Ontario, he came up through the provincial ranks and joined the Chicago Black Hawks in 1957. He was only 18, but already fully formed as a player.
In a league full of big, tough men, Hull was bigger and tougher, but also remarkably skilled. His slap shot is still remembered as a weapon of NHL mass destruction.
Teammate Glenn Hall once said of it: “The idea was not to stop that thing, but to avoid getting killed.”
Defending Hull was a special challenge because he didn’t have to find a way around you. He could just go through you.
He remains the only hockey player who is more recognizable with a pitchfork in his hands, bailing hay, than he was in uniform on the ice. Up until the chemists got involved, Hull may have had the most imposing physique in sports history. He put it to brutal use on the ice.
He was the first player to score more than 50 goals in a campaign. He scored more points than anyone ever had in a season. He won a single Stanley Cup, giving him access to the best-ever conversation.
In a two-fisted league, Hull and his Chicago teammates played a particularly exuberant brand of hockey. It made them famous outside the game’s usual strongholds.
Like a lot of other famous people in the sixties, Hull took full advantage of the social perks.
I spent an hour with him in a hotel room a decade ago. He was releasing a book and in high spirits, clearly enjoying the attention. But there was a hook of resentment in every story he told.
“We had guys who liked to have fun. But when they dropped the puck at 7:30, we played guilty,” Hull said. I remember him titled forward, waving his hands around. They were enormous.
Guilty?
“We used to say to each other, ‘C’mon, guys. We were pissed up last night. So now we gotta play guilty.’ And there are a lot of guys who don’t understand that – these coaches, I mean. Don’t bother us, cause we’re the guys who know how to play. I never listened to a coach in my life.”
This sort of approach worked for Hull, until it didn’t.
When he publicly mused that he would consider leaving the NHL to join the upstart World Hockey Association for a million dollars – a ridiculous amount at the time – guess what? They gave him a million dollars. That was 1972.
Having got what he wanted, Hull found out it wasn’t what he needed. Once the biggest deal in the biggest league, Hull became the richest guy in an outfit no one cared about.
He continued to score goals in the WHA through the seventies, but his star dimmed. His turncoat status meant he wasn’t invited to join Team Canada for the Summit Series. Just like that, Hull was cut out of Canadian history.
Eventually, he’d find his way back to the national team and the NHL, but the damage had been done. Hull became a cautionary tale about valuing the wrong things.
Post-career, shorn of the protection that teams and the journalists who cover them offer to active stars, Hull went from colourful to objectionable. In the late nineties, it was reported that Hull had given an interview to an English-language Russian newspaper in which he praised Hitler and denigrated Black people.
Once back home, Hull denied it all. The paper stuck to its version of the story and the issue was left unresolved. Whatever the truth of it, Hull was pushed down to the second tier of NHL legends. He still worked the autograph circuit, but no one was anxious to have him make appearances on behalf of the game.
Hull leaned into his reputation as a hockey wild man rather than a legend of the sport. By that point, he was most familiar to contemporary fans as the father of Brett Hull. That seemed to bother him as well.
Where does Hull figure in the pantheon? As a cult figure.
The NHL’s golden age is chock-a-block with team-first guys who played the game the right way – Howe, Beliveau, Richard, Orr, et al. The hard thing is finding a guy in there that anyone had a bad word to say about.
Hull was the wild card in that pack. He played like a virtuoso and lived like a roadie. He made terrible decisions, but kept emerging from them, diminished but intact. He was hockey’s fallen star, and one who kept falling.
It doesn’t make him heroic, but it does make him interesting.
That time I met him he was going through his own book, looking at pictures of himself and pointing out the other people in them.
“He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead,” Hull said, quiet and contemplative for the first time that afternoon. “I hate it when I’m the only one alive in these things.”
Now he’s gone, and an era with him. If it can be said that the NHL had a wild, uncontrollable period in its adolescence, Hull embodied it. Then, like a lot of precocious teens, he never quite get over it.
EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers signed defenceman Travis Dermott to a professional tryout on Friday.
Dermott, a 27-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., produced two goals, five assists and 26 penalty minutes in 50 games with the Arizona Coyotes last season.
The six-foot, 202-pound blueliner has also played for the Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs.
Toronto drafted him in the second round, 34th overall, of the 2015 NHL draft.
Over seven NHL seasons, Dermott has 16 goals and 46 assists in 329 games while averaging 16:03 in ice time.
Before the NHL, Dermott played two seasons with Oilers captain Connor McDavid for the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters. The team was coached by current Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The driver charged with killing NHL hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they bicycled on a rural road had a blood-alcohol level of .087, above the .08 legal limit in New Jersey, a prosecutor said Friday.
Gaudreau, 31, and brother Matthew, 29, were killed in Carneys Point, New Jersey, on Aug. 29, the evening before they were set to serve as groomsmen at their sister Katie’s wedding.
The driver, 43-year-old Sean M. Higgins of nearby Woodstown, New Jersey, is charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. At a virtual court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that he be held for trial after prosecutors described a history of alleged road rage and aggressive driving.
“’You were probably driving like a nut like I always tell you you do. And you don’t listen to me, instead you just yell at me,’” his wife told Higgins when he called her from jail after his arrest, according to First Assistant Prosecutor Jonathan Flynn of Salem County.
The defense described Higgins as a married father and law-abiding citizen before the crash.
“He’s an empathetic individual and he’s a loving father of two daughters,” said defense lawyer Matthew Portella. “He’s a good person and he made a horrible decision that night.”
Higgins told police he had five or six beers that day and admitted to consuming alcohol while driving, according to the criminal complaint. He also failed a field sobriety test, the complaint said. A prosecutor on Friday said he had been drinking at home after finishing a work call at about 3 p.m., and having an upsetting conversation with his mother about a family matter.
He then had a two-hour phone call with a friend while he drove around in his Jeep with an open container, Flynn said. He had been driving aggressively behind a sedan going just above the 50 mph speed limit, sometimes tailgating, the female driver told police.
When she and the vehicle ahead of her slowed down and veered left to go around the cyclists, Higgins sped up and veered right, striking the Gaudreas, the two other drivers told police.
“He indicated he didn’t even see them,” said Superior Court Judge Michael J. Silvanio, who said Higgins’ admitted “impatience” caused two deaths.
Higgins faces up to 20 years, a sentence that the judge said made him a flight risk.
Higgins has a master’s degree, works in finance for an addiction treatment company, and served in combat in Iraq, his lawyers said. However, his wife said he had been drinking regularly since working from home, Flynn said.
Johnny Gaudreau, known as “Johnny Hockey,” played 10 full seasons in the league and was set to enter his third with the Columbus Blue Jackets after signing a seven-year, $68 million deal in 2022. He played his first eight seasons with the Calgary Flames, a tenure that included becoming one of the sport’s top players and a fan favorite across North America.
Widows Meredith and Madeline Gaudreau described their husbands as attached at the hip throughout their lives. Both women are expecting, and both gave moving eulogies at the double funeral on Monday.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — The Miami Dolphins will bring in another quarterback while starter Tua Tagovailoa deals with his latest concussion, coach Mike McDaniel said Friday.
For now, Skylar Thompson will be considered the Dolphins’ starter while Tagovailoa is sidelined. Tagovailoa left Thursday night’s 31-10 loss to Buffalo in the third quarter with the third known concussion of his NFL career, all of them coming in the last 24 months.
“The team and the organization are very confident in Skylar,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel said the team has not made any decision about whether to place Tagovailoa on injured reserve. Tagovailoa was expected at the team facility on Friday to start the process of being evaluated in earnest.
“We just have to operate in the unknown and be prepared for every situation,” McDaniel said, noting that the only opinions that will matter to the team will be the ones from Tagovailoa and the medical staff.
McDaniel added that he doesn’t see Tagovailoa playing in Miami’s next game at Seattle on Sept. 22.
“I have no idea and I’m not going to all of a sudden start making decisions that I don’t even see myself involved in the most important parts of,” McDaniel added. “All I’m telling Tua is everyone is counting on you to be a dad and be a dad this weekend. And then we’ll move from there. There won’t be any talk about where we’re going in that regard … none of that will happen without doctors’ expertise and the actual player.”
Tagovailoa was 17 for 25 passing for 145 yards, with one touchdown and three interceptions — one of which was returned for a Buffalo score — when he got hurt. Thompson completed eight of 14 passes for 80 yards.
Thompson said he feels “fully equipped” to run the Dolphins’ offense.
“What’s going to lie ahead, who knows, but man, I’m confident, though,” Thompson said after Thursday’s game. “I feel like I’m ready for whatever’s to come. I’m going to prepare and work hard and do everything I can to lead this team and do my job.”
