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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.
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 7 years earlier. His point total was tied the next year by teammate Stan Mikita and their record was broken three years later by Phil Esposito. Hull led the league in goal-scoring seven times during the 1960s. In 1968–69, 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 15 full NHL 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.
In October of 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 4 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.
In September 1981, Hull attempted one final comeback with the New York Rangers at age 42, at the suggestion of Rangers coach Herb Brooks, who wanted to try reuniting Hull with his former Jets teammates, Hedberg and Nilsson. The comeback attempt lasted five exhibition games, during which Hull had one goal and one assist, before he and the Rangers both decided it was best to end the comeback. It was the second time in Hull's career that he had played exhibition games with the Rangers; in 1959, after missing the playoffs the previous spring, the Rangers and the Boston Bruins had been sent on an exhibition tour of Europe, and then-emerging star Hull and Eddie Shack were added to the Rangers' roster for the tour. Hull and Shack co-led the Rangers in scoring, each netting 14 goals over the 23-game tour.
Hull ended his career having played in 1,063 NHL games, accumulating 610 goals, 560 assists, 1,170 points, 640 penalty minutes, three Art Ross Trophies, two Hart Memorial Trophies (he finished second or third in the voting an additional six times), a Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, and a Stanley Cup Championship, adding 62 goals and 67 assists for 129 points in 119 playoff games. He played in 411 WHA games, scoring 303 goals, 335 assists, and 638 points, adding 43 goals and 37 assists in 60 playoff games. His North American major league professional total of 1,018 goals (NHL and WHA including playoffs) is the third most of all-time after Wayne Gretzky (1,072) and Gordie Howe (1,071), although the NHL does not recognize scoring statistics from the WHA in players' career totals.
In 2003, he was named the figurehead commissioner of a new World Hockey Association, intended to operate during the 2004–05 NHL lockout; it never entered play, and the organization subsequently ran several ephemeral low-minor league and unsanctioned Tier II junior leagues. Hull served as an ambassador for the Blackhawks through part of the 2021–22 season until the organization announced, "When it comes to Bobby, specifically, we jointly agreed earlier this season that he will retire from any official team role."
Hull's marriage to Joanne McKay ended in divorce in 1980 after several abusive incidents.
In 1986, he was arrested and charged with assault and battery after allegedly hitting his third wife, Deborah, after an argument. She eventually dropped the charges.
Hull was romantically involved with a woman named Claudia Allen. In 1980, Hull retired from the Hartford Whalers to take care of Allen, who was injured in a severe automobile accident. The couple never married.
In 1998, Hull allegedly made pro-Nazism comments to The Moscow Times. He was quoted as saying, "Hitler, for example, had some good ideas. He just went a little bit too far." Hull later denied having complimented Hitler and said journalists had raised the subject. The incident was parodied on the Canadian news satire show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, with Rick Mercer reading a spot saying Hull had been misquoted, and had actually said, " Darryl Sittler had some good ideas."
Bart Hull was a standout running back for the Boise State University' Broncos football team and played with the Ottawa Rough Riders and Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Canadian Football League (CFL) as well as one season of professional indoor football prior to recurring injuries. Post football, he briefly played professional hockey with the Idaho Steelheads.
Bobby Jr. and Blake both played junior and senior hockey. Bobby Jr. won the Memorial Cup with the 1980 Cornwall Royals. Later, the brothers played together for the Allan Cup-winning Brantford Mott's Clamatos of the OHA Senior A Hockey League (AAA Men's Amateur) in 1987.
Hull's daughter, Michelle, was an accomplished figure skater, becoming British Columbia Pre-Novice Champion at the age of 11. After many knee injuries, she ended her figure skating career and is now an attorney licensed in two states. She works with battered women as a result of witnessing her father's treatment of her mother, Joanne McKay.
In February 2025, Hull's family released a statement saying that researchers had determined that Hull had stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at the time of his death.
| 1954–55 | St. Catharines Teepees | OHA | 0 | — |
| 1955–56 | St. Catharines Teepees | OHA | 79 | 9 |
| 1956–57 | St. Catharines Teepees | OHA | 95 | 24 |
| 1957–58 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 62 | — |
| 1958–59 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 50 | 2 |
| 1959–60 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 68 | 2 |
| 1960–61 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 43 | 4 |
| 1961–62 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 35 | 12 |
| 1962–63 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 27 | 4 |
| 1963–64 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 50 | 2 |
| 1964–65 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 32 | 27 |
| 1965–66 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 70 | 10 |
| 1966–67 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 52 | 0 |
| 1967–68 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 39 | 15 |
| 1968–69 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 48 | — |
| 1969–70 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 8 | 2 |
| 1970–71 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 32 | 16 |
| 1971–72 | Chicago Black Hawks | NHL | 24 | 6 |
| 1972–73 | Winnipeg Jets | WHA | 37 | 16 |
| 1973–74 | Winnipeg Jets | WHA | 38 | 4 |
| 1974–75 | Winnipeg Jets | WHA | 41 | — |
| 1975–76 | Winnipeg Jets | WHA | 30 | 4 |
| 1976–77 | Winnipeg Jets | WHA | 14 | 2 |
| 1977–78 | Winnipeg Jets | WHA | 23 | 12 |
| 1978–79 | Winnipeg Jets | WHA | 0 | — |
| 1979–80 | Winnipeg Jets | NHL | 0 | — |
| 1979–80 | Hartford Whalers | NHL | 0 | 0 |
| 1974 | Canada | SS74 | 8 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 0 |
| 1976 | Canada | Canada Cup | 7 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 2 |
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