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The Third Best Hull

I Should Have Been Fourth But They Wouldn't Let My Sister Maxine Play

ECW PRESS

Reaching for the Summit

SOMETIMES I WONDER how I ended up on the ice in Moscow, playing in the most important game in hockey history. I wasn't supposed to be there — it was my brother Bobby who was expected to lead the charge against the Soviets in 1972. But he had chosen to sign with the WHA and wasn't allowed to participate, which left me playing left wing with some of the biggest names in hockey in the most important game ever played. I never considered myself a star, and certainly wasn't in the same league as Stan Mikita, the Blackhawks' legendary centre. But Mikita, who was also on the team, hadn't clicked with the style of play coach Harry Sinden was implementing, so there I was on the ice while Stan watched the game from a bar in Czechoslovakia. The series had gone through its distinctive highs and lows, but by the eighth and final game, I knew we could win. The team, which was pared down from its initial 40 players to a more consistent lineup numbering around 20, was playing together as a group. We were united, though things hadn't exactly been smooth.

Before the final game there was already a controversy. Each team had the opportunity to pick the officials for certain games, and in the final it was our choice. The Soviet officials told us the ref we'd picked was sick and that we were going to get Josef Kompalla, a West German referee who had been brutal in the sixth game.

But the team received a boost the day of the game when a telegram, several inches thick, arrived from Canada. It just kept rolling out. Up until that point, we had no sense of our immense Canadian support. The team, after all, had been booed by our own fans following the loss of Game Four in Vancouver. Besides, all we had was Russian television, which seemed to focus on the exploits of Lenin. We knew the games were being televised, but we didn't know the impact they were having in Canada.

In fact, Canada seemed distant when we were in Russia. Moscow itself was the very definition of a culture clash. The first day we were in Moscow we walked into the Luzhniki Ice Palace, where the Summit Series games were played. There were still construction workers finishing the arena. In the stands a welder was working on something, and I decided to walk over to ask what he was doing. When the shield was flipped up, I realized the welder was a woman. I remember thinking that it was the first time I'd ever seen a female welder.

Likewise, when we'd go into the dressing room and have a shower, there was a lady who stood nearby and handed out towels. Handing towels to naked hockey players wasn't a big deal to her, as she was obviously in her late sixties or early seventies, but it was really strange to us.

I always dressed beside Pit Martin and Jimmy Pappin before Blackhawks games. As I got ready for the final, I found myself dressing beside Rod Gilbert and Jean Ratelle, who were my linemates for the final few games. I felt relaxed. I knew I was playing with two great players and we were scoring some goals. On top of that, we felt like a team. However, with the controversy involving the referee, it was clear that the ball was in the Russians' court. At the start of the game, our line assisted on a couple of goals in the first and second periods, but the team found itself down 5-3 heading into the third. The Canadian team had been accused of playing dirty, but in this case the officiating was a problem from the start. Early in the first period, J.P. Parisé received a penalty without doing anything to merit one.

"Are you crazy?" J.P. shouted at the ref. "I didn't do anything!" For arguing the call, Kompalla, the West German ref, gave him 10 minutes more.

"Well, don't bother giving me 10 minutes because I'm going to kill you right now!"

And he broke his stick on the ice and skated at the official as if he was going to whack him over the head. At the last moment, J.P. skated away.

During the intermission before the third period, the Russians put down an inch of water on the ice. There were two Zambonis flooding it, and it's clear the Russians wanted to slow us down. When the buzzer sounded, Harry Sinden told the officials we weren't coming out until the ice froze. We stayed in the dressing room for 10 minutes until the ice began freezing over.

While we were sitting there, Alan Eagleson, the head of the Players' Association, came into our dressing room. The most valuable player of the series was going to get a Ford car, so Eagleson came in and said, "If you guys win this series, everyone will get a new car." (He said it, but after the win the cars never showed up.)

Finally, we went back out on the ice and Esposito scored, putting us within one. Then Cournoyer scored the tying goal, but the goal light didn't come on. Eagleson freaked out.

It must be said that there's no one in the world with a bigger ego than Alan Eagleson, so he must have thought the Russian soldiers who were guarding the ice knew who he was. The Russian crowds were very well behaved, perhaps because the soldiers didn't put up with much. In any case, Eagleson thought he could do things that no one else in the arena was allowed to do and when the goal light didn't go on, he ran towards the goal judge. He didn't get far before the guards grabbed him.

The players all went over to where this was happening, but I don't think the Russian guards had any idea what was going on. The guards couldn't figure out what the big deal was — they were simply dealing with someone who was out of line. But our players rescued Eagleson and took him across the ice before the guards could take him away. In retrospect, we should have let them have him. I admit I wasn't in the group rushing over to help him out — I was lagging behind in the other pack.

After Cournoyer's goal, everything was clicking. Our goalie, Ken Dryden, had the Russians figured out and was playing back in the net, where he was better able to pick out the shots the Soviets took from close range. Phil Esposito was playing well, and Paul Henderson was playing better than he had at any time in his career. But the game was nearing its end and we were tied.

I was on the ice when, with two minutes to go, there was a break for a television commercial. The Russians seemed confused by it, but Ford and Labatt had paid a lot of money and they had already lost a lot of money because sometimes the ref would ignore the commercial and drop the puck anyway.

During this break I looked up and saw that Leonid Brezhnev, the head of the Russian government, was sitting above the ice in a box. The whole politburo was there, as well. They were facing the ice, but people in the seats couldn't see them.

Despite the game being tied, Brezhnev was kissing the other Russian politicians on the cheek as a sign of celebration because a tie would give the Russians a win in the series. The Russians had put more pucks in our net at that point and, in the event of a tie, the number of goals would decide the series.

I played 20 more seconds and then the Russians changed and we went off. Peter Mahovlich, Phil Esposito, and Yvan Cournoyer came on with a minute to go, and soon after Peter hit the ice, Paul Henderson stood up on the bench and yelled at Peter to come off. Esposito was finishing the game because that's who we wanted out on the ice. It's a famous scene now where Henderson took a shot, fell behind the net, and got up just as Esposito passed the puck at an awkward angle. It was a sweeping pass towards the net and Henderson got his stick on it. He was initially stopped, but on the rebound he pushed the puck past the Soviet goalie, Vladislav Tretiak.

I can't understand why Tretiak didn't stop it. Henderson came out in front of the net and simply banged it, and in it went. It was a goal that I felt Tretiak should have had. Even when I see replays today, the goal doesn't look normal. It was so strange that even when we tried to recreate it in the twenty-fifth reunion game, we had to do it seven times before we could get it right.

After Henderson scored, the whole team jumped out on the ice, but the game wasn't over and Harry knew it. There were still 34 seconds remaining, but the Russians never really tried after Paul scored. They were finished. They didn't pull the goalie, they didn't rush, they didn't give it all their effort.

I'm not sure whether — at that time — Henderson realized the magnitude of his goal. I often wonder why he couldn't keep that level of play going throughout his career. Maybe he was successful in the series because he was playing with Bobby Clarke at centre, something that worked well for him.

He became a born-again Christian soon after the series and still says he thinks he was put on this earth just to score that goal, which led him to finding God. If that's the impact the goal was going to have on the scorer, well, I'll tell you that I wake up every day and thank my lucky stars that it wasn't me that scored.

When we came off the ice, Cournoyer was sitting next to me and I asked him if this was like winning the Stanley Cup, especially considering that Cournoyer had played on the Montreal team that had beaten the Blackhawks for the Cup the previous spring.

"No, Dennis — this is 10 times better!"

From that point on, despite the fact I never managed to play on the top team in the NHL, I've always felt like I've won 10 Stanley Cups.

Bobby's Little Brother

IT WASN'T UNTIL I went to St. Catharines in 1960 that being Bobby Hull's younger brother struck me as being a challenge. Growing up, it had always been fun to be known as his brother, especially since, right from the start, Bobby was a great player. He was so big and muscular for his age that he dominated the games he played in Belleville, the town near our home where every one of the boys in my family played hockey. In 1952, by the time Bobby was 13, he was already on his way to stardom, off to play his style of fast, flashy hockey in Hespeler, Ontario, for one of the Chicago Blackhawks farm teams. From there he went to nearby Woodstock where his team won the Ontario championship and then to St. Catharines, one rung on the ladder down from the Blackhawks and the NHL. But the NHL beckoned and in 1957 — 58, Bobby scored 13 goals for the Blackhawks in his first season with the team. It had taken him five years from when he left Point Anne, our hometown on Lake Ontario, to play in the NHL.

I was never jealous of my brother, even later when I began to hear people compare me to him, often in unflattering terms. I was eight when Bobby started with the Blackhawks and it was certainly exciting to hear the stories about him that floated around town. When you come from a family of 11, there is no jealousy. The Hulls simply didn't function that way. For years I'd slept in the same bed as my brothers. In fact, Bobby says he never slept alone till he got married.

If anything, the esteem in which I held my brother got me in trouble. When you're young and your brother has left home to play hockey, well, it makes you a bit of a hero. I revelled in the fact I was the brother of Bobby. Though not as flashy a player as Bobby, I stood out in Pee Wee and regularly scored a lot of goals. At the time there was an all-star team picked from the 10 teams in the area, and it looked very much like I'd make the team. The all-star game was played in Kingston, some 30 miles from Point Anne. Everyone expected I was a sure choice, except I didn't make the team.

"Why didn't Dennis get picked for the team?" one of my friends asked the coach.

"Because he talks too much about his brother," was the response. But by the time I reached Junior, I was at an age where I wanted to be known for my own accomplishments. I loved my brother and never held the comparison against him. It wasn't his fault. It's just that the comparison was so easy. We looked alike, we both played left wing, we had a similar skating style, and we both had a big slapshot.

Bobby, though, always had the great shot. As long as I can remember, he could always do it. I wasn't blessed in the same way Bobby was, but by the time I was 12, I wanted a great shot too. The Junior Canadiens, the Montreal Canadiens farm team, used to play against the Belleville McFarland-Juniors in the senior league games, and since Belleville wasn't far away, we'd often go to see the McFarlands play. There was a kid on the Canadiens named Bobby Rousseau, who was 18 at the time, and could slap it from the blue line. I remember being amazed that someone could actually do that.

I wanted to have a shot as good as Rousseau's, so I practised all summer to develop the skill needed. I'd get a piece of linoleum and put it on a road that ran down to the factory. About 60 feet from the road there was a garage, and I'd take the linoleum, lay it down, and shoot at the garage, which was made of concrete, like everything else in a town that was built around a cement factory. I'd shoot the puck and then I'd walk up to the garage, pick the puck up, turn around, and walk back to the garage. Because I only had one puck, I'd shoot it for hours and hours, but it took a while to walk up to the garage and bring the puck back. But the work eventually paid off. The difference between Bobby's shot and my shot was obvious though. Bobby could shoot a puck through a car wash without it getting wet. I couldn't hit the car wash.

People used to say, "It must be genetic, something with those Hulls." But it was just practice — I simply wanted to have a good shot and worked for hours to develop it. Once Bobby made the NHL, he'd give me these fabulous Northland sticks he used that had "HULL" printed on them. I continued to practise using these sticks.

With Brett (Bobby's son), the theory of the Hull shot being in our genes emerged again. There was a right winger who played for the Florida Panthers named Jody Hull, who isn't a relation. The night they retired Bobby's number in Winnipeg, Brett had a day off, so he and I flew up to Winnipeg. The club retired Bobby's number before the game in an amazing ceremony. After that, the Jets played Hartford, the team Jody Hull was skating for at the time. Brett and I were watching the game, and Hull got a breakaway and wound up for the big blast. The only problem was that he shot it about 40 miles an hour, as opposed to the 100 miles an hour that Bobby's shot was clocked at.

Brett looked perplexed.

"Uncle Dennis, I think he's got to either improve his shot," Brett said, "or change his name."

THE SHOT ASIDE, comparing me to my brother wasn't fair. From the start it was clear that Bobby was special. The media coverage Bobby received while he was growing up was like the coverage Wayne Gretzky received when he was in his early teens living in Brantford. Though Point Anne, a company town on the Bay of Quinte, wasn't exactly the most obvious place to develop a great hockey star, everyone in the area knew about Bobby and followed his every move.

It's funny, but Bobby, from a very young age, was always treated differently by those around him. When he was 12 years old, he was playing Bantam. My dad always made him play a league up, saying to Bobby that it was better for his game.

"Just because you're better than those kids, you're not going to get better unless you play against someone older," Dad told him.

I know the lecture: it's one I heard when I started playing against boys who weren't my age. On this occasion I was sitting with my mother watching him play. After the game was over, we sat with Bobby and began watching the next game. All of a sudden this kid came up into the stands with his father.

"This kid is going to be a great hockey player," I heard the father say. "Go up there and get his autograph."

The child, who wasn't much younger than Bobby, looked a little confused by the situation, but did what his father said and came up to him in the stands.

"Robert, can I have your autograph?"

Bobby turned to my mother and said, "Mom, what's an autograph?"

"Robert, this boy thinks you're a special player and he wants you to sign your name so that if you become an NHL player, he can say he met you," Mom explained. Bobby signed his name for the boy, who left the stands and went on his way. But Mom wasn't finished.

"If you do become an NHL player and kids ask you for your autograph, never turn them down."

He never did.

Bobby's notoriety continued in the area even after he'd left and had begun his career in the NHL. In the late fifties, the sports broadcaster on the station from Kingston was Max Jackson. The whole family would always gather around the TV to see how Bobby had played, and sometimes, at the end of the night, he'd say, "Mrs. Hull, Bobby scored," right on the TV, which was pretty exciting when you're 11 years old.

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Excerpted from The Third Best Hull by Dennis Hull, Robert Thompson. Copyright © 1998 ECW Press. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
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