Dennis Hull carved own path during memorable NHL career

No one could poke fun at Dennis Hull better than Dennis Hull himself.

And no hockey player at the after-dinner microphone could needle former teammates and opponents more skillfully, wickedly or side-splittingly than the “third best Hull,” as he often referred to himself, proudly saying he ranked behind two legendary Hull snipers -- his brother, Bobby, and his nephew Brett, Bobby’s son.

Dennis Hull died Friday at age 81. The Chicago Black Hawks, for whom Hull played 904 games between 1964-77, followed with a statement from team chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz.

Dennis was almost six years the junior of his late brother Bobby, who died Jan. 30, 2023, at age 84. The siblings were Black Hawks teammates for eight seasons (1964-72).

The 5-foot-11, 198-pound left wing played his final 55 games with the Detroit Red Wings in 1977-78, finishing his career with 654 points (303 goals, 351 assists) in 959 regular-season games and 67 points (33 goals, 34 assists) in 104 Stanley Cup Playoff games.

Hull was also an important member of Team Canada for the historic 1972 Summit Series, a landmark eight-game tournament pitting an NHL all-star team against a select team from the Soviet Union. Playing on a line with New York Rangers greats Jean Ratelle and Rod Gilbert, he scored in Game 4 in Vancouver, then had a goal and two assists in Games 6, 7 and 8 in Moscow.

He was the “other” Hull in the Summit Series, Bobby ineligible to play for the NHL squad after having jumped to the WHA’s Winnipeg Jets.

Dennis (l.) and Bobby Hull, wearing similar gap-toothed grins, with their mother, Lena, during a 1960s Chicago Black Hawks training camp session in St. Catharines, Ontario.

It never bothered Dennis that he forever played in the shadow of Bobby, no matter that he could shoot the puck with the same boards-denting power and was the equal of his brother in some parts of the game. Their tremendous speed earned them almost matching nicknames: Bobby was the “Golden Jet,” Dennis the “Silver Jet.”

Indeed, Dennis was proud of Bobby, willing to take a ribbing as the kid brother of arguably the most exciting offensive player of the day. They famously appeared together in a 1960s TV commercial for a popular hair-styling cream, Bobby elbowing Dennis away from a bathroom mirror with the gentle scolding to “lay off the greasy kid stuff” and go with Brylcreem because “a little dab’ll do ya.”

With the Black Hawks, playing mostly on a line with Pit Martin and Jim Pappin, Hull racked up seven seasons of 25 or more goals, hitting a high of 40 with 26 assists in 1970-71, reaching a top points total of 90 (39 goals, 51 assists) in 1972-73.

Bobby Hull maintained he had nothing to do with Dennis’ arrival with the Black Hawks, the family name sometimes more a burden than benefit.

From left, Eric Nesterenko, Bill Hay and Dennis Hull at Chicago Stadium during the 1964-65 season, Hull’s first in the NHL.

“Dennis got where he is on his own hook and he’s going a long way in the game,” Hull wrote in “Hockey Is My Game,” his 1967 autobiography. “He still needs ice time. The more he’s on the ice, the more chance he has to gain experience. …

“I don’t lose any chance to correct him if I see him do something stupid on the ice, but every day Dennis gets better at the game. The fact that he happens to be my brother has nothing to do with his being on the team.”

Beyond the NHL, Hull cherished his memories of the Summit Series, a breathtaking split of four games in Canada and four in Moscow that was tailor-made for his superb storytelling.

Hull’s gift of the gab would serve him for decades as a hugely popular after-dinner speaker around North America, regaling audiences that ranged from grade school parent-teacher associations through beer-league banquets, conventions of every kind and black-tie corporate events. Many of his stories focused on big brother Bobby, saying “some of them might even be true.”

Dennis Hull stretches for the puck ahead of Detroit Red Wings’ Ron Murphy and Gary Bergman (r.) during a 1965 game at Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

Hull harvested some of those tales in his 1998 autobiography “The Third Best Hull (I Should Have Been Fourth but They Wouldn't Let My Sister Maxine Play).”

At the microphone, he would take his audiences back to September 1972 in Moscow, all of Canada having a nervous breakdown with hockey supremacy hanging in the balance, and rattle off stories like this one, related by historian and author Brian McFarlane in his 2001 book “Team Canada 1972: Where Are They Now?”

“Marcel Dionne was just a kid and Patty (practical-joking defenseman Pat Stapleton) took him aside shortly after training camp opened,” Hull said. “Patty said, ‘Marcel, you’re going to be my roommate when we get to Moscow, but there’s a problem. There’s such a shortage of beds in Moscow that when the wives and girlfriends come over, it’s going to be four people in one bed.’”

Stapleton continued, ‘So here’s what we’ll do. I’m married so you can’t sleep next to my wife, Jackie. So, Jackie will sleep on the outside, then I’ll be next to her. But I don’t want to sleep next to you, so it will be your girlfriend next, then you.’

Dennis Hull in a Chicago Black Hawks studio photo and in his 1972 Summit Series portrait.

“Marcel said, ‘But I don’t want you sleeping next to my girlfriend.’ Patty said Marcel went to Harry (Sinden, Team’s Canada’s coach) and lodged a complaint about the four-in-a-bed situation.”

Canada followed its climactic Game 8, series-clinching win with an exhibition in Prague against the Czechoslovakian national team, a miracle that anyone wearing the maple leaf could see clearly enough to lace their skates.

“We'd been up all night, as you can imagine,” Hull told NHL.com in 2019, celebrating the Hockey Hall of Fame election of Czech legend Vaclav Nedomansky.

“We got to the airport in Prague and Harry (Sinden) lined us up against a wall. He went down the line of players, ‘You look like you could play, you don’t, you do, uh, not you. …’ I got picked because somehow I looked like somebody who could play.

Dennis Hull pulls away from Toronto goalie Bruce Gamble during a 1968 game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“I was heading to the rink in Prague, and this tall, handsome guy is walking beside me,” Hull said. “He wants to know all about Canada, all about the NHL, and stuff. I’m telling him everything I know. We get to the rink and I say, ‘Buddy, I’ve got to go.’ I walk into the rink, get dressed for the game and come out for the start. I look at their center and I say, ‘Oh my God, that’s the guy I was talking to… it’s Nedomansky!’”

Hull and teammate Bob Clarke would ride on a homecoming fire truck in Montreal with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, both players playfully slapping jersey-number baggage stickers on Trudeau’s back.

And Hull had special praise for fellow joker Guy Lapointe, the Montreal Canadiens defenseman and Team Canada star, for some fun during a reunion game in Ottawa against the Russians a couple of decades later.

“After the first period, Guy said, ‘You’re playing good, guys, but don’t get a swelled head, eh?’” he recalled.

Dennis Hull goes to the backhand in front of Toronto goalie Dunc Wilson during a 1975 game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Lapointe had the same words of encouragement after the second period, but when he ducked out of the dressing room for a moment, Hull grabbed a trainer’s screwdriver and tightened his friend’s helmet, shrinking it a few sizes.

“Then Guy jammed his helmet on and he couldn’t get it over his ears,” Hull said. “The guys howled at that little scene. But Guy knew I’d done it.”

Hull was busier than ever in so-called retirement, along the way dabbling in broadcasting, buying a cattle ranch north of Toronto, returning to university to earn a degree and working as sports director of the Illinois Institute of Technology. He had a part in a car dealership in the Niagara area, too, all of those things sharing time with his speaking engagements.

To the end of his life, the memory of the Black Hawks’ so-close 1971 Game 7 Stanley Cup Final loss to the Canadiens burned in him, for better or worse.

In fact, the five-time NHL all-star played in the Stanley Cup Final three times with Chicago, the Black Hawks losing to the Canadiens in seven games in 1965 and 1971, then again to Montreal in six games in 1973. He had 24 points (nine goals, 15 assists) in 16 games during the 1973 postseason, one behind Canadiens star Yvan Cournoyer for the League lead.

Dennis Hull waves to United Center fans on Jan. 7, 2019, taking part in the Chicago Blackhawks’ “One More Shift” promotion.

In Game 7 of the 1971 Final, Hull beat Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden, who wasn’t yet even a rookie, at 19:12 of the first period at Chicago Stadium to give the home team a 1-0 lead. Danny O’Shea made it 2-0 at 7:33 of the second before Jacques Lemaire, at 14:18, and Henri Richard, at 18:20, sent the game into the third period tied 2-2.

Richard scored what proved to the Cup-clincher at 2:34 of the final period.

Hull had dreamed since boyhood in Point Anne, Ontario, of scoring the Game 7 Stanley Cup-winning goal. For nearly eight minutes on May 18, 1971, until O’Shea’s goal, the dream was alive. But Richard’s second of the game crushed his hopes, and those of all in Chicago.

“As the final seconds ticked away, I felt the dream die slowly and painfully,” Hull told Hockey Digest magazine in a flashback feature. “The little kid in me never stopped dreaming the dream. Even today, he’s in there, hands raised, waving to the crowd, watching the Cup pass from teammate to teammate, from Pit Martin to Jim Pappin to Bill White to Tony Esposito. The kid in me still dreams it -- even though the man never got to live it.”

Richard’s Stanley Cup-winning goal was assisted by Rejean Houle and Guy Lapointe.

If Hull forgave, he didn’t forget. Twenty years later, he turned a screwdriver to Lapointe’s helmet and exacted a small bit of very sweet practical-joking revenge.

Top photo: Dennis Hull waves to United Center fans on Jan. 7, 2019, taking part in the Chicago Blackhawks’ “One More Shift” promotion prior to a game against the visiting Calgary Flames.