Bobby Hull, a Hockey Hall of Famer who played his junior career in St. Catharines with the Teepees, has died at age 84. Nicknamed the “Golden Jet,” Hull left an indelible mark on hockey with blazing speed, a blistering slapshot and numerous off-ice struggles over his life.
The first hockey player to sign a million-dollar contract, Hull played two junior seasons in St. Catharines with the Teepees before embarking on a 23-year professional career with the Chicago Blackhawks, Winnipeg Jets and Hartford Whalers.
He scored 913 goals in 1,474 games and has a statue in his honor outside the United Center where the Blackhawks play in Chicago.
“He was like a speeding bullet down the left wing with a hard shot,” said local hockey writer and retired teacher John Hewitt. “He could bring people out of their seats because of his speed and the velocity of that shot. Goalies feared his shot.
Hewitt’s 2008 book “Garden City Hockey Heroes” chronicled junior hockey history in St. Catharines and included more than 300 interviews with former players.
Hewitt quoted former St. Catharines Standard sports editor Jack Gatecliff’s first impression on meeting Hull at the Esquire Hotel on Queenston Street, less than a block from the old Garden City Arena, in 1955.
“It was Bobby Hull, blond, muscular, already the indelible stamp of a sports hero,” Gatecliff wrote. “His smile (he had all his teeth at 16 years of age) would, and did, melt the hearts of millions of young, and not so young, girls.”
The native of Point Ann, about 10 kilometers east of Belleville on the Bay of Quinte, arrived in St. Catharines as one of 58 hopefuls trying to make the St. Catharines Teepees.
However, he wasn’t an average 17-year-old. At a time when hockey players did as management told them, Hull arrived determined to play center. Coach Rudy Pilous saw him as a left winger. Hull left the team twice during the first season when Pilous kept switching him to wing, only to be convinced to come back each time. He finished with 11 goals and 18 points.
The following year, 1956-67, Hull blossomed with 33 goals and 28 assists, but it wasn’t a smooth ride. His season was interrupted on Jan. 5, 1957, when Pilous suspended him for 10 days. “He won’t be back in the lineup until he shows an entirely different attitude,” Pilous said.
Hull relented and asked to rejoin the club. The season ended with a playoff loss to Guelph that also marked the end of his career in St. Catharines. Despite having two years of junior eligibility left, Tommy Ivan, the Chicago GM, decided Hull was ready for the NHL. He and another St. Catharines junior star, Stan Mikita, led the Blackhawks to the Stanley Cup in 1961.
Gare Joyce, who works for Sportsnet and has had a 30-year career writing for magazines and newspapers, penned a Hull biography, “The Devil and Bobby Hull: How hockey’s original million-dollar man became the game’s lost legend.”
In it, Joyce delved into Hull’s personal life, and a fall from grace that left him broke and exiled from the game.
“He was a sublime talent, a great teammate, a lousy son and sibling, an absent father, and an abusive, violent husband,” Joyce said in an interview with The Standard Monday. “He ran the gamut. Everyone had an opinion about Bobby, and it basically rode on how they knew him. Teammates were generally positive, but not entirely.
“There isn’t anyone in any dressing room that didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes. There was a distaste for it, but there was a lot of tolerance. That was the nature of the times.
“Quite a few celebrated Bobby’s approach to life. They thought it was something to which he was entitled.”
Joyce said Hull’s first wife was a 16-year-old from St. Catharines he married while playing junior hockey. They divorced shortly after they married.
“She was living in Niagara Falls, and I managed to track her down,” Joyce said, “but she wouldn’t talk. By that standard, he was old for his years in many ways. He had an incredible degree of resolve.
“That he would refuse to play a position in junior, I can completely see that.”
Hull’s pro career included a jump to a new league in 1972, the WHA. Hull had been unhappy with his salary during 15 seasons with Chicago as one of the game’s biggest stars. The million-dollar contract gave the WHA credibility and a marquee name.
“It tells you a lot that by taking on the Writzes (the Blackhawks’ owners) and the hockey establishment by signing with the WHA, he made hundreds of players hundreds of millions of dollars.
“He broke down an exploitative system, and yet none of those people gave him a hockey job after making all that money because of him. He never worked in the game. At the end with the Hawks, he was basically a ‘Walmart’ greeter.”
Joyce said Hull became a cautionary tale for stars like Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.
“They knew his story. They knew that fans perceived him, fairly or not, as a talent but not a winner. They knew he was punished for his hubris, never forgiven for taking on the Blackhawks’ owners and the NHL.
“They knew his private life had become a public scandal. They knew his commercial image had been exposed as a fraud.
“Others who came after him went to school on Hull’s experiences. No giving into inner demons. No giving in to temptation. No deals with the Devil. No one wanted to fall like he did.”
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