Brett Hull

Brett Hull
File:Brett Hull.jpg
Born	(1964-08-09) August 9, 1964 Belleville, ON, CAN
Height	5 ft 10 in (178 cm)
Weight	200 lb (91 kg; 14 st 4 lb)
Position	Right Wing
Played for	AHL Moncton Golden Flames NHL Calgary Flames St. Louis Blues Dallas Stars Detroit Red Wings Phoenix Coyotes New York Rangers
NHL draft	117th overall, 1984 Calgary Flames
Playing career	1986–2005

Brett Andrew Hull (born August 9, 1964 in Belleville, Ontario and raised in Chicago, Winnipeg and Vancouver) is a former NHL player, the current co-general manager of the Dallas Stars, and the son of legendary player Bobby Hull and nephew of Dennis Hull. Though in the earliest years of his career few saw him as a potential star, the colorful and often outspoken Hull announced his retirement on October 15, 2005 with 741 career goals, placing him third on the all-time list. He played for the Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings and Phoenix Coyotes. He also scored a controversial Stanley Cup winning goal on Buffalo Sabres goaltender Dominik Hašek in 1999 to give Dallas their only Cup win. Hull also won the Cup as a member of the Red Wings in 2002. The son of a Canadian father and American mother, he holds dual U.S./Canadian citizenship.

Hockey career

Beginnings

Unlike each of his four siblings (Bobby Jr., Blake, Bart and Michelle), who were all born in their native Chicago, Brett Hull was born in Belleville, Ontario, Canada, where the family spent summers. Brett was taught how to skate at age five by his mother, Joanne, who was a professional figure skater for Hilton Hotel shows. He started to play organized hockey at age seven in Elmhurst, Illinois for the Elmhurst Huskies with future NHL forward Tony Granato and Tommy Stapleton, son of Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Pat Stapleton. The Hull family moved to Winnipeg in 1972 as his father signed a million dollar contract to play for the WHA Winnipeg Jets. Meanwhile, Brett's junior career continued with the Tuxedo Jets, and a couple of years later he joined the Canadian Professional Hockey School's team. One very early hockey milestone worth note is Brett's (along with his Winnipeg South Monarchs team) winning of the prestigious Quebec Winter Carnaval Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament in 1977. Even at this very early stage of his career, Brett could rifle a slapshot that sparked fear in young goaltenders. One honorary attendee at the championship game, Jean Béliveau (a 10 time Stanley Cup champion with the Montreal Canadiens) visited the Winnipeg dressing room just to meet 'the young Hull'.

When Bobby and Joanne Hull separated in 1979, Brett, his brother Blake and his sister Michelle moved to Vancouver with their mother. Brett played bantam and then midget hockey at the North Shore Hockey Club as well as competing in baseball and gridiron football.

Brett Hull was drafted out of the Junior A British Columbia Junior Hockey League's Penticton Knights as the 117th overall pick (sixth round) in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft by the Calgary Flames. Hull then played two years of U.S. college hockey for the University of Minnesota Duluth. He made his international debut for Team USA at the 1986 Ice Hockey World Championships in Moscow where he was his team's leading scorer. Being born in Canada, he would also have been eligible to play for Team Canada; however, at the time, the Team Canada management did not show an interest in him. Thus, he would play for Team USA for the remainder of his career, in turn alienating himself from many Canadian hockey fans who thought of him as a "traitor" to Canada. After the 1986 Championships, Hull turned pro, playing his first NHL game in the 1986 Stanley Cup Finals. He spent most of the 1986-87 season with the minor league Moncton Golden Flames, being named to the AHL's First All-Star Team and receiving the Dudley "Red" Garrett Memorial Award as the league's top rookie, before being recalled to the NHL for good in the 1987-88 NHL season. On March 7, 1988, he was traded to the St. Louis Blues, for whom he played most of his career.

The Blues

While in St. Louis, Hull developed into a prolific goal scorer, and was amongst the best players in the NHL. Hull and linemate Adam Oates were dubbed "Hull and Oates" (a pun on the well-known musical duo of Hall & Oates). In Hull’s best season, 1990-91, he scored 86 goals, the third highest mark ever recorded in one season, also setting a new record for right wingers in goals. That year he was awarded the Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL's Most Valuable Player. He also represented the United States at the 1991 Canada Cup where he again emerged as the Yankee team's leading scorer with nine points in eight games as the Americans lost to Team Canada in the finals. Hull and Team USA got their revenge five years later in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey where he scored the decisive goal in the final game against the Canadians and also was elected to the tournament All-Star team.

Midway through the 1991-92 NHL season, the St. Louis Blues traded Adam Oates to the Boston Bruins for Craig Janney. Although talented, Janney was not of the same caliber as the highly skilled Oates. Hull's production dropped off and he said he was never the same player without Oates..

Though Hull's play declined during the remainder of his term with the Blues, he continued to be a perennial all-star and averaged more than one point per game in each of his seasons in St. Louis. Two of his three career four-goal games came with the Blues; first on April 16, 1995 against Detroit, and again on October 10, 1995, during the 1995-96 home opener against Edmonton, both of which were wins. He also went on to score his 500th goal in a December 22, 1996 win over the Los Angeles Kings, in which his milestone goal also capped a hat trick.

File:Hasek hull goal.jpg

An overhead shot of Hull's controversial goal

The Stars

Hull played eleven seasons for the Blues before signing with the Dallas Stars as a free agent before the 1998-99 NHL season. During his initial season, his traditional jersey number, 16, was being worn by Stars forward Pat Verbeek, so Hull wore number 22 for that season, switching back to 16 in the 1999 offseason after Verbeek left the team. Hull scored his milestone 600th goal (and later his 601st goal) during a New Years Eve 1999 5-4 victory over Anaheim. He helped the Stars capture the Stanley Cup that season, scoring a controversial Cup-winning goal off his own rebound in the third overtime period of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals against Buffalo Sabres goalie Dominik Hašek. Video replay showed that Hull's skate was in the crease, which the Sabres argued was a violation of a rule then in effect that disallowed goals if an offensive player was in the goal crease. The goal was reviewed as the Stars celebrated on the ice, but was allowed to stand by the video review officials, who ruled that Hull's three consecutive shots on Hašek, the third of which went in, constituted possession of the puck through to the end of the play (the rule allowed for a player to bring the puck into the crease and score). The legality of the goal is still debated, and it is arguably the most disputed Cup-winning goal in NHL history. The crease interference rule, which was introduced in 1997 amid widespread criticism, was eliminated the following season. Ironically, Hull and Hašek later won the Stanley Cup as teammates in 2002 with the Detroit Red Wings.

The Red Wings

In 2001, Hull joined the Red Wings as a free-agent. Like Verbeek two years prior, Hull did not ask for jersey number 16, which the Wings had removed from circulation out of respect for Vladimir Konstantinov, whose career had ended in a limousine accident six days after the Wings' 1997 Stanley Cup victory. For his three seasons in Detroit, Hull wore number 17, and he continued to play strongly. After participating in the 2002 Winter Olympics, earning a silver medal with Team USA, Hull played a key role in the Wings' 2002 Cup victory, scoring 10 goals en route to his second Cup.

The Coyotes

Hull's international career ended on a sour note during the 2004 World Cup of Hockey where he was benched for the rest of the tournament following two indifferent performances against Canada and Russia.

On August 6, 2004, Hull signed a two-year, $4.5 million contract with the Phoenix Coyotes, who un-retired his father’s jersey for him. Bobby Hull's #9 jersey had been originally retired by the franchise on February 19, 1989, when they were still the Winnipeg Jets. The first year of the contract was nullified by the 2004-05 NHL lockout, and some argue the time off damaged Hull's game irreparably; when hockey restarted in 2005-06, Hull played only five games with the Coyotes before, dissatisfied with his performance, he announced his retirement on October 15, 2005.

Retirement

The University of Minnesota Duluth retired his #29 jersey on February 3, 2006[1], and later that same year, on December 5, 2006, the St. Louis Blues retired his #16. The Blues also changed the name of the stretch of Clark Avenue, the street that Scottrade Center between 14th and 15th Streets in St. Louis, to "Brett Hull Way" and have also announced plans to number the road such that the arena will be number 16. In a recent interview during Hockey Night in Canada, Hull was quoted as saying that he would never coach hockey. He also said the best big-game goalie he ever played with was Ed Belfour, during his time in Dallas, and that the best offensive defencemen he had played with were Sergei Zubov and Nicklas Lidström. The player he said he hated to play against was Chris Chelios. The coaches he said he liked the most were Ken Hitchcock and Scotty Bowman. The person that he said he disliked the most was Mike Keenan.

At the beginning of the 2006-07 season, Hull returned to the Dallas Stars in a front-office role as special assistant to team president Jim Lites, identifying himself in Dallas Stars television commercials as the team's self-proclaimed "Ambassador of Fun", as well as "Campaign Manager" for Stars players hoping to be voted to the 2007 All Star Game, to be held in Dallas. Before becoming co-GM of the Stars, he answered fan-submitted questions in a weekly editorial entitled "Brett's Bites" on DallasStars.com and was a part-time television studio analyst for both NHL on NBC and the Stars' regular broadcasts on FSN Southwest. [2]

On November 11, 2007, Stars' owner Tom Hicks fired Doug Armstrong as general manager and later named Hull and Les Jackson as interim co-general managers; the pair have been signed as GMs until the end of the 2010-11 NHL season.

Personal life

He married fellow University of Minnesota Duluth student Alison Curran in Las Vegas on May 27, 1997, though they later divorced. They have one son together: Jude, an ice hockey goalie, and two daughters, Jade, and Crosby. Hull married longtime girlfriend Darcie Schollmeyer on July 21, 2006 in Cabo San Lucas.

Career achievements and facts

• Finished his career with 741 goals (3rd all-time), 650 assists (48th all-time), 1391 points (19th all-time) and 1269 games (43rd all-time).
• Named an NHL First Team All-Star in 1990, 1991 and 1992.
• Won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy in 1990.
• Won the Hart Memorial Trophy in 1991.
• Won the Lester B. Pearson Award in 1991.
• Played in the NHL All-Star Game in 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997 and 2001.
• Scored 50 goals in 50 games twice in his career; only Wayne Gretzky, with three 50-50 seasons, has done it more often, and he and Gretzky are the only ones to do it more than once.
• Won the Dudley "Red" Garrett Memorial Award in 1987.
• 4th quickest to reach 500 goals based on number of games played.
• Recorded 33 career Hat Tricks (4th all-time).
• Led the NHL in Goals scored in 1990, 1991, and 1992.
• All-time career leader in Playoff Powerplay Goals with 38.
• Tied for 1st on the all-time Playoff Game Winning Goals list with 24.
• Holds the St. Louis Blues franchise record for goals scored with 527.
• Is the only hockey player ever to score 50 goals in a season in the NCAA, the minor leagues, and the NHL. In 1985-86 he scored 52 goals for the U. of Minnesota-Duluth; in 1986-87 he scored 50 goals for the Moncton Golden Flames of the AHL, and from 1989-1994 recorded 5 straight 50+ goal seasons (72,86,70,54,57) for the St. Louis Blues.
• In 1998, before reaching several career milestones, he was ranked number 64 on The Hockey News' list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players.
• Won the Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars in 1998-1999 and the Detroit Red Wings in 2001-2002.
• On December 5, 2006, his #16 sweater was retired by the St. Louis Blues and raised to the rafters of the Scottrade Center. Along with his father, Bobby, they are the only father-son combo in any professional sport to have their respective numbers retired.

Career statistics

				Regular Season						Playoffs
Season	Team	League		GP	G	A	Pts	PIM		GP	G	A	Pts	PIM
1984-85	Minnesota-Duluth	NCAA		48	32	28	60	12
1985-86	Minnesota-Duluth	NCAA		42	52	32	84	46
1985-86	Calgary Flames	NHL		--	--	--	--	--		2	0	0	0	0
1986-87	Moncton Golden Flames	AHL		67	50	42	92	16		3	2	2	4	2
1986-87	Calgary Flames	NHL		5	1	0	1	0		4	2	1	3	0
1987-88	Calgary Flames	NHL		52	26	24	50	12		--	--	--	--	--
1987-88	St. Louis Blues	NHL		13	6	8	14	4		10	7	2	9	4
1988-89	St. Louis Blues	NHL		78	41	43	84	33		10	5	5	10	6
1989-90	St. Louis Blues	NHL		80	72	41	113	24		12	13	8	21	17
1990-91	St. Louis Blues	NHL		78	86	45	131	22		13	11	8	19	4
1991-92	St. Louis Blues	NHL		73	70	39	109	48		6	4	4	8	4
1992-93	St. Louis Blues	NHL		80	54	47	101	41		11	8	5	13	2
1993-94	St. Louis Blues	NHL		81	57	40	97	38		4	2	1	3	0
1994-95	St. Louis Blues	NHL		48	29	21	50	10		7	6	2	8	0
1995-96	St. Louis Blues	NHL		70	43	40	83	30		13	6	5	11	10
1996-97	St. Louis Blues	NHL		77	42	40	82	10		6	2	7	9	2
1997-98	St. Louis Blues	NHL		66	27	45	72	26		10	3	3	6	2
1998-99	Dallas Stars	NHL		60	32	26	58	30		22	8	7	15	4
1999-00	Dallas Stars	NHL		79	24	35	59	43		23	11	13	24	4
2000-01	Dallas Stars	NHL		79	39	40	79	18		10	2	5	7	6
2001-02	Detroit Red Wings	NHL		82	30	33	63	35		23	10	8	18	4
2002-03	Detroit Red Wings	NHL		82	37	39	76	22		4	0	1	1	0
2003-04	Detroit Red Wings	NHL		81	25	43	68	12		12	3	2	5	4
2005-06	Phoenix Coyotes	NHL		5	0	1	1	0		--	--	--	--	--
NHL Totals				1269	741	650	1391	458		202	103	87	190	73

International play

Olympic medal record
Men's Ice Hockey
	2002 Salt Lake City	Ice Hockey

Played for United States in:

• 1986 World Championship
• 1991 Canada Cup (won silver medal)
• 1996 World Cup of Hockey (won championship)
• 1998 Winter Olympic Games
• 2002 Winter Olympic Games (won silver medal)
• 2004 World Cup of Hockey

See also

• List of NHL players
• 50 goals in 50 games
• List of NHL statistical leaders
• List of NHL seasons
• Notable families in the NHL
• List of NHL players with 1000 points
• List of NHL players with 1000 games played
• List of NHL players with 500 goals

References

Horn, Barry (2006-12-06). "Former Star Hull to join NBC's hockey team". The Dallas Morning News. pp. 7C. Retrieved 2006-12-06. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• Brett Hull career statistics at The Internet Hockey Database
• Brett Hull at HockeyDraftCentral.com
• Brett Hull biography at Legends of Hockey (archived)
• Brett's U.S. Olympic Team bio