NHL99: Brett Hull quit hockey, then became one of its all-time stars

June 05, 2024

Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.

Brett Hull was just 21 years old and coming off his second college season when he joined the Calgary Flames late in the 1986 Stanley Cup playoffs. He wasn’t expected to play a big role — just to soak up the atmosphere.

Neil Sheehy, now an NHL agent, was a 25-year-old defenseman for those Flames. He knew that Hull, like a lot of prospects, had been put up in a local hotel during his postseason stay. He figured he’d offer him something a bit more comfortable.

“Why don’t you come to my house and live with me for the rest of the year?” Sheehy asked him.

Hull took him up on the offer, so Sheehy got a good opportunity to witness the young right winger’s earliest NHL impressions. Hull was coming off a season for University of Minnesota-Duluth in which he scored 52 goals in 42 games, and was two seasons removed from a 105-goal 56-game junior season. Still, the confidence he had coming into the league was staggering, and one day he said something that made Sheehy gasp.

“Now he’s a kid right out of college and he says, ‘Yeah, I’ll go snap 50 in this league,'” Sheehy remembers. “I said, ‘You know Brett, you’re living with me and you can say whatever you want with me, but when you’re around the other guys, you might want to tone that down a little bit. I mean, you think you’re going to snap 50 in the NHL?'”

And Sheeny was right. Hull did have 50 goals the following season, but it was with Calgary’s AHL affiliate.

However, it wouldn’t be long before he was putting up 50 goals — and more — in the NHL. Just three years later, and after a trade to the St. Louis Blues, he blew past his bold prediction, with 72 in 1989-90. And a season after that, he scored 86, which still stands as the third-highest single-season total in league history, behind Wayne Gretzky’s 92 and 87.

“Here we are years later, and I’m going, ‘Brett, why did you understate yourself?'” Sheehy says, laughing hysterically. “Why didn’t you say you ‘want to go snap 80 in this league?’ I mean, c’mon, only 50? Talk about shooting low.

“It’s obvious to me now that he was toning it down.”

Neither shooting low nor toning it down, of course, would end up being part of Hull’s legacy.

Hull would go on to score 741 times over 19 seasons, finishing his career in 2005 at No. 3 in career goals behind only Gretzky and Gordie Howe, though he has since been passed by Jaromir Jagr and Alex Ovechkin. Still regarded as one of the league’s all-time shooters and scorers, Hull ranks 22nd on The Athletic‘s list of the top 100 players of the NHL’s post-expansion era.

And Sheehy wouldn’t be the first or last to be caught off guard along the way, including Hull himself.

NHL Hall of Famer Brett Hull is a legend among his former coaches and teammates.

Some weren't sure if their favorite stories about him were appropriate for The Athletic.

Not Hully.https://t.co/vEdbwg1HCT pic.twitter.com/jwlNGLjggC

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) February 22, 2022

The son of Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Hull, the “Golden Jet,” the player who would eventually earn the nickname the “Golden Brett” lasted until the sixth round of the 1984 NHL Draft, going at No. 117.

But before he would follow in his father’s footsteps, Hull nearly stopped in those tracks when he was 17 years old.

In Canada, after midget hockey, young players can be drafted by a junior team, Tier 1 or Tier 2. Hull went unclaimed by both.

“I wasn’t that great a player and nobody wanted me,” Hull says. “It’s a lot of my own fault. It’s not like I was ‘Mr. Charlie Hustle,’ that’s for sure. So, basically, I quit hockey.”

But after he did, a phone call from a friend, suggesting he should try out for the Penticton Knights in Penticton, British Columbia, proved to be life-changing. It got him back in the game, which after time away, felt fun again, and natural.

“All of a sudden, it was magic, like I knew how to do it,” Hull says. “I don’t know where it came from. I’m like, ‘Dude, this is so easy.’ It was crazy!”

But despite putting up 48 goals that first season in Penticton, Hull was passed over for the second straight time in the 1983 NHL Draft. It took that 105-goal season, in just 57 games, before Calgary decided to take a chance in the late rounds.

The Flames didn’t know it at the time, but while Hull was netting 50 goals for their AHL affiliate, the Blues were keeping an eye on him. Bob Plager was an amateur scout for the club and was sent to Moncton, New Brunswick, on specific orders from former Blues general manager Ron Caron.

“Ron would say, ‘Let’s see Moncton’s schedule. Oh boy, they’re playing three games. I want you to watch that Hull,'” Plager once recalled. “Ron was in love with Brett Hull when he was drafted by Calgary. He’d say, ‘Oh Brett Hull, oh Brett Hull, this guy is a goal scorer.’

“I phoned Ron one day, and he said, ‘How was Brett?’ I said, ‘Ron, he’ll drive you crazy. He was out there one time and he never came back (to the defensive zone). He broke a stick one time and just looked at his stick. He’s a coach killer.'”

Caron was undeterred.

“Ron said, ‘Well, how did he do?'” Plager continued. “I said, ‘Oh, he’s good. He got three goals and one assist. But again, he’ll drive you crazy.’ He said, ‘I don’t care if he drives me crazy if he gets me three goals and one assist.'”

In 1987, Calgary watched its chief rival, the Edmonton Oilers, win the Stanley Cup again and had to make a move. The Blues had trade bait in defenseman Rob Ramage and goalie Rick Wamsley.

Former NHLer Terry Crisp had been Hull’s head coach in Moncton and was an assistant in Calgary. He was part of the Flames’ internal meetings discussing the trade proposal.

“There were seven of us in the room, and we all knew that Brett Hull was a goal scorer,” Crisp remembers. “We knew full well what he was capable of. I think somebody in the room said, ‘You know we’re trading a 40-goal scorer?’ But we felt at the given time that we were close to what we accomplished.”

The vote was 6-1. On March 7, 1988, Hull and Steve Bozak were sent to St. Louis for Ramage and Wamsley, and Caron had his man.

In 11 seasons with the Blues, Hull would score 527 goals and 27 hat tricks, both still team records, and there were too many magical moments to count.

Brett Hull Blues team records	Number (year)
Goals	527
Single-season goals	86 (1990-91)
Single-season points	131 (1990-91)
40-goal seasons	8
50-goal seasons	5
60-goal seasons	3
100-point seasons	4
Game-winning goals	70
Power-play goals	195
Multi-goal games	120
Goal streak	10 (twice)
Hat tricks	27

“It was like having Babe Ruth in the prime of his career,” former Blues teammate Brendan Shanahan once said. “He was funny, he was brash. He would do things and say things that you thought couldn’t be said and then he would just sort of call his shots.”

It was the shot Hull had been perfecting since his days at Winnipeg’s practices with his famous father. He remembers Dad telling him to watch ex-Jets like Anders Hedberg and copy them.

“That helped immensely, watching pro players and getting tips,” Hull says. “I was just a fat little kid that didn’t skate well, so I would just sit around and shoot pucks. I just loved shooting. The key to me was I hated missing the net. It’s just such a waste of time missing the net.”

Calgary was right about Hull being a future 40-goal scorer. In his first full season with the Blues, 1988-89, he had 41. He went to his year-ending exit meeting with coach Brian Sutter expecting a pat on the back, but that’s not what happened. One of six brothers from hockey’s famed family, Sutter told Hull to work harder, be better, and if he did, there’s no telling how good he could become.

“When Brett came to us, he was a good human being,” Sutter says. “He was just misinterpreted on what he wanted out of life and how he was going to get it. Everybody in life wants the two most important words — trust and respect — and you can’t get one without the other. He was somebody who always wanted that.”

It didn’t happen overnight, particularly because of the way Hull notoriously chided teammates. But they came to love him and couldn’t help but see the extraordinary talent.

“In retrospect, it was like a breath of fresh air,” Gino Cavallini, Hull’s former linemate, says. “With all the pressure guys were under, making little to no money at the time, he kept it loose. But he was pretty serious with his antics; he wasn’t messing around.”

In addition to Sutter’s challenge, there were two reasons Hull’s goal totals soared: an uncanny knack for somehow going undetected by opponents on the ice, and the radar-like ability of center Adam Oates to find him.

“My whole game was stealth,” Hull says. “My theory was, you have to make a defender make a decision, so I would go places where they would get out of their comfort zone — ‘Do I go out and cover him, or do I stay here?’

“I called it the dead zone. Unless I was getting ready to shoot, I was always moving. I’m telling you, most of them play defense for a reason, and it’s because they don’t get the game offensively. They’ll usually make a bad decision.”

Detroit Red Wings Hall of Fame defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom won seven Norris trophies, but even he is fascinated by how Hull was able to fly around so freely.

“Hullie had that ability to time it perfectly when he came into that quiet area, and the pass didn’t have to be perfect,” says Lidstrom, who was teammates with Hull from 2001 to 2004 in Detroit. “The pass could be behind him or in his feet, but he could still get that one-timer off in a hurry and almost always hit the net. It was so hard to defend because he could be floating a bit but he knew when to arrive.”

Chris Pronger, who played with Hull in St. Louis and against him on other teams, was always impressed, too.

“Everybody looks at Hullie’s goals, but if you add his hockey IQ into his ability to shoot the puck, that’s the byproduct of what we saw,” Pronger says. “He had the wherewithal to understand the game — where to go, what to do.”

It didn’t help opposing defensemen that in St. Louis, Hull had Oates, who was dealt to the Blues by Detroit in 1989. Oates’ passes were usually right in Hull’s wheelhouse.

“It was almost like bees with their antennas,” Hull says. “It was weird, how creepy it was, that we knew what we were doing. There’s a lot of real smart players, like Gretzky and (Mario) Lemieux, but Adam Oates was right there with him. The only thing I loved doing was scoring, and when you have a guy with his skill level and his brains, all I had to do was get open and bury it.”

In Hull’s 86-goal season, Oates assisted on 41 of them.

“The trust factor between the two of us was incredible,” Oates says. “It was almost a, ‘He knew that I knew that he knew’ thing. And the ‘Hull & Oates’ thing had a good ring to it, so that didn’t hurt.”

ICYMI: Relive some of best Hull and Oates moments with tonight's pregame ceremony. WATCH: https://t.co/B4SbxI2ozr pic.twitter.com/JPrLCF6hjd

— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) April 2, 2016

The other noticeable thing with Hull was that, despite all the times he lit the lamp with the Blues, you rarely saw him celebrate. He claims one of the worst “traditions” in today’s game is when a player scores, he’ll usually head to the bench and bump fists with his teammates.

“I would never go high-five the bench unless I was changing,” he says. “Why would I want to make (defenseman) Chris Chelios look like an idiot? So I score, he goes back to the bench and (coach) Mike Keenan is yelling at him. What’s he going to do? He’s going to look for me next time, right?

“I got the biggest compliment when we were playing Edmonton in the playoffs, and I think I got two goals and three assists, and they were saying after the game, ‘I don’t even notice Brett Hull out there.’ I go, ‘Yeah, well you did when you looked at the scoresheet!'”

In what St. Louis GM Larry Pleau said at the time was a “tough decision,” the Blues did not offer Hull a contract extension in 1998, and one of the NHL’s biggest stars signed with the Dallas Stars.

Ken Hitchcock was the veteran coach of the Stars and had faced Hull a lot, but it was another thing interacting with him.

“I went to have a talk about the power play, and 10 minutes into it, I decided he knew so much more than I did about power play; we better talk about music or golf, because there was no way I was going to teach him anything about the power play,” Hitchcock says. “I was in way over my head with him, so we didn’t talk about the power play. That was a hard lesson for me, that I was dealing with a player that thought of things at a level that I never even considered.”

Hull would help Dallas advance to the Stanley Cup Final each of his two seasons there, claiming the franchise’s first championship in 1999. He had the game-winning goal against Buffalo, a goal that garnered a lot of controversy because he had a toe in the Sabres’ crease.

“It’s a goal,” Hull still says. “It’s a goal that will live in infamy. That’s all they do is talk about it. It’s kind of cool, actually.”

They were loud in Buffalo, but they were silent in St. Louis, where some had said over the years that you couldn’t win a Cup with Hull on the roster.

“I heard that my whole career (with the Blues), right?” Hull says. “Nothing felt better, especially to get the goal. It was the greatest feeling ever because, honestly, I thought about that. I wondered, ‘Am I going to have to be one of these guys that never wins a Cup?'”

Hull didn’t just win one. He won two. In 2001, he signed a free-agent contract with the Red Wings, and in what he calls the most incredible time of his career playing with so many future Hall of Famers, he won his second championship in 2002.

“Chelios called me and said, ‘Do you want to come to Detroit?'” Hull recalls. “I said, ‘Are you kidding? With that team?’ I mean, (Steve) Yzerman, Shanahan, Lidstrom, playing for Scotty Bowman. I’ll look back on that for the rest of my life and say, ‘I feel like I played for the Yankees in the ’60s with (Mickey) Mantle, (Roger) Maris and (Joe) DiMaggio.”

For three seasons with the Red Wings, Hull fit right in. In fact, Bowman even recalls him accepting a role on the penalty-killing unit.

“I think I surprised him one day,” Bowman says. “I said, ‘I want to start using you on the PK.’ I wanted to give the other team something to be concerned about.’ He said, ‘I’m not against it,’ so I started to use him. He was a smart player, so smart players can always adapt to whatever they have to do.”

Dominik Hasek and Brett Hull in 2002 (Ryan Remiorz / AP Photo/CP)

But Hull will always be remembered as a goal scorer. At ages 38 and 39 with Detroit, he had 37 and 25 goals, including a combined 10 game winners. He had 110 game winners in his career, which is the fifth-most in NHL history behind Jagr (135), Ovechkin (124), Howe (121) and Phil Esposito (118).

“That was my inner mantra,” Hull says. “I never wanted to be the guy who was known for getting the fifth goal in a 5-0 win. I always said, ‘The most important goals for me are the ones that tied the game or the game winner.’ When the game was on the line, I wanted to be out there and get that goal.”

He is proud of a few things in his career, and the first is that he even had one.

“I quit when I was 17 and end up in the Hall of Fame with two Stanley Cups,” Hull says. “It’s like a surreal dream. I mean, without the NHL, I’m not talking to you about being one of the Top 100 players in the world. That’s a cool thing that people are interested in your opinion and they want to know stories about you.”

And he’s proud, too, that he did it his way.

“You have to make people think, right?” Hull says. “When they started to make the rule changes, I was very vocal about that. That’s the problem. There’s so many people that if it’s not their idea, it’s not a good idea. You’ve got to be able to say, ‘You know, that’s actually a pretty good idea.’

“And then I always had a problem with authority, whether it was teachers or coaches. That’s just who I am. It’s probably unfortunate, but I was kind of a rebel that way. But I wouldn’t change a thing.”

(Top photo: Denis Brodeur / NHLI via Getty Images)

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