Robert Marvin Hull (January 3, 1939 – January 30, 2023) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player who is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. His blond hair, skating speed, end-to-end rushes, and ability to shoot the puck at very high velocity all earned him the nickname "the Golden Jet". His talents were such that an opposing player was often assigned just to shadow him.
During his 23-year playing career, from 1957 to 1980, he played in both the National Hockey League (NHL) and World Hockey Association (WHA) with the Chicago Black Hawks, Winnipeg Jets, and Hartford Whalers. He won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player twice and the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL's leading point scorer three times, while helping the Black Hawks win the Stanley Cup in 1961. He also led the WHA's Winnipeg Jets to Avco Cup championships in 1976 and 1978. He led the NHL in goals seven times, the second most of any player in history, and led the WHA in goals one additional time while being the WHA's most valuable player two times; his 77 goals scored in the 1974–75 WHA season was the most in league history.
He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983, the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1997, and received the Wayne Gretzky International Award in 2003. In 2017 Hull was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history.
Hull was born in Point Anne, Ontario, on January 3, 1939. He was the son of Lena Cook and Robert Edward Hull, a cement company foreman. He played his minor hockey in nearby Belleville, and then Junior B hockey for the Woodstock Warriors in the fall of 1954. Hull led the Warriors to the 1955 Sutherland Cup as Ontario champions. Later, he played for the Galt Black Hawks and the St. Catharines Teepees in the Ontario Hockey Association, before joining the Chicago Black Hawks in 1957 at the age of 18.
Hull had a solid debut year, finishing second in voting for the Calder Memorial Trophy. Hull originally wore numbers 16 and 7 as a Black Hawk but later switched to his famous number 9, a tribute to his childhood idol Gordie Howe. By his third season (1959–60), he led the league in goal- and point-scoring (the Art Ross Trophy), a double feat which he also achieved in 1961–62 and 1965–66. He led Chicago to the Stanley Cup in 1961—their third overall and first in 23 years. He finished second in point-scoring three further times.
On March 12, 1966, Hull became the first NHL player to score more than 50 goals in a season, surpassing Maurice Richard's, Bernie Geoffrion's, and his own mark of 50 goals. His 51st goal, scored on Cesare Maniago of the New York Rangers, earned him a seven-minute standing ovation from the Chicago Stadium faithful. Hull eventually scored 54 goals that season, the highest single-season total of the Original Six era. That same year, Hull set the record for the most points in a season with 97, one more than the previous record set by Dickie Moore seven years earlier. His point total was tied the next year by teammate Stan Mikita in the final season with six teams in NHL history; in the 1968–69 season, Phil Esposito broke the points record. Hull led the league in goal-scoring seven times during the 1960s. In the 1967–68 season, he joined the 400 goal club on January 7.
In the 1968–69 season, despite Hull breaking his own goals in a season record by four goals (netting 58) and setting a career NHL high of 107 points (second in the league that year), the Hawks missed the playoffs for the first time since his rookie season. By his final NHL season, he had scored 50 goals or more a remarkable five times. This was only one time less than all other players in NHL history combined up until that point in time.
In his first fifteen seasons, he was voted the First-Team All-Star left winger ten times and the Second-Team All-Star left winger twice. His slapshot was once clocked at 118.3 mph (190.5 km/h) and he could skate 29.7 mph (47.8 km/h). During his drive to be the first to eclipse the 50 goal mark, Hull's wrist shot was said to be harder than his slapshot.
Hull and teammate Stan Mikita were catalysts for a 1960s craze where players curved the blades of their hockey sticks, which became widely referred to as "banana blades". Hull is the player typically linked most to the rule that banned this practice because of the potential danger to goalies, few of whom wore masks in that era. The curved blade made the puck's trajectory unpredictable. The rule originally limited the blade curvature to between 0.5 in (13 mm) and 0.75 in (19 mm); in 1970, it was set at 0.5 in (13 mm). NHL Rule 10.1 currently limits the curvature to 0.75 in (19 mm).
Long unhappy with his poor salary despite being one of hockey's preeminent superstars, Hull responded to overtures from the upstart World Hockey Association's Winnipeg Jets in 1972 by jesting that he would jump to them for a million dollars, a sum then considered absurd. Gathering the other league owners together to contribute to the unprecedented amount on the grounds that inking such a major star gave instant credibility to the new rival league that was competing directly against the entrenched NHL, Jets owner Ben Hatskin agreed to the sum, and signed Hull as a player-coach for a contract worth $1.75 million over 10 years plus a $1 million signing bonus, on June 27, 1972. Although his debut with Winnipeg was held up in litigation by the NHL, Hull instantly became the WHA's greatest star, winning the Gordie Howe Trophy as league MVP in that very first season despite being bugged by bone chips in his elbow that still saw him score 51 goals. He then won the MVP award again in the 1974–75 season. With Swedish linemates Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson he formed one of the most formidable forward lines of the 1970s (known as "The Hot Line"), leading the Jets to two AVCO Cups during his time with the club. His best performance was during the 1974–75 season, when he scored 77 goals to set a new professional mark, while adding 65 assists for a total of 142 points, five behind the league leader, one of two times he finished second in the point-scoring race in the WHA; he set a then record for goals in a professional season at home in Winnipeg on April 6, 1975, in his 78th and last game played that season; he did so off Russ Gillow of the San Diego Mariners.
In October 1975, Hull sat out a game as a form of protest against hockey violence, stating, “Setting an example for kids should be hockey's main theme. Bodychecking and aggressiveness is part of hockey. So is the odd fight because of the tempo. But not the stuff that's going on. The intimidation. The stick‐swinging, flailing it like an ax. The high stick. The spear. That's not hockey. Intimidation isn't hockey.” In the five WHA seasons in which he played more than half the schedule, he was voted a First-Team All-Star thrice and a Second-Team All-Star twice, while tallying 50 goals and 100 points four times each. The Jets won the 1978 WHA playoffs with Hull delivering eight goals in the postseason run. In the game four victory over the New England Whalers, Hull scored in the third period to make it 4–2 in the eventual 5–3 victory that meant Hull delivered the series-clinching goal. As it turned out, this was his last postseason goal in his career. Hull scored 43 goals in the WHA playoffs, the most in WHA postseason history.
Because he joined the rival league, Hull was not allowed to represent Team Canada in the 1972 Summit Series, which pitted Canada's top NHL players against the USSR's national team. Two years later, a second Summit Series was held in which Hull and other top WHA stars (including Gordie Howe, who had been retired from the NHL at the time of the initial Summit Series) competed against the Soviet national team. The WHA lost the series four games to one (three ending in a tie), despite Hull's seven goals. He was a key member of the Canadian squad that won the 1976 Canada Cup, though, scoring five goals and three assists in seven games. On March 11, 1978 in Quebec, Hull scored his 1,000th combined goal (including regular season and playoffs of both the NHL and WHA) against the Quebec Nordiques, making him only the second player with 1,000 goals in hockey history next to Gordie Howe. He initially announced his retirement in the fall of 1978.