How one pressure-packed series spurred Hull, Stars to championship

Brett Hull was not the nervous type, but this made him nervous.

The man who played 11 seasons with the St. Louis Blues and was the face of the franchise, left as a free agent and joined the Dallas Stars in 1998. Less than a year later, he was back in the Gateway City trying to beat his old team and prove that he was a force for winning.

"For a guy who never got nervous, because I was very confident in my abilities, I was pretty nervous going in there," Hull told DallasStars.com this week. "When (Dallas) signed me, I remember people saying I was the missing piece to the puzzle, and I really never thought about that until the playoffs started. Then, people were saying I needed to be the guy to score the key goal, and I just started thinking, if we lose, it's going to be my fault."

Hull really did have that kind of pressure on him. He battled with Mike Keenan when he was with the Blues, and carried a bit of a diva reputation. He wanted to make the pretty plays, but not the hard ones. He wanted to cheat defensively so that he could score goals. He wasn't a guy who could help you win the Cup.

If the Blues beat the Stars, it would be just one more example of how a team with Brett Hull couldn't win the big game. So yeah, there was a lot riding on this. Hull had 58 points (32 goals, 26 assists) in 60 games for the Stars, so his start with the team was impressive. But he had no goals and one assist in a four-game sweep of the Oilers in the first round, and that was a bit concerning.

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"I don't think I scored a goal in that first series against Edmonton, so thank God we swept them," Hull said. "Nieuwy was piling up goals, so that helped a lot and kept the pressure off, but then I'm going back to St. Louis and the pressure is dialed up even higher. Playing against that team in that building when I had been there for so long, it was definitely different. I felt it."

Hull scored early in the second period of Game 1, and that helped give the Stars a 3-0 victory. It was a great moment for the man who sits fourth all-time with 741 career goals, but Hull said he was learning to become a different player, and this series against the Blues would help facilitate that change.

Hull had a goal and an assist in the next three games as the Blues tied the series up at two games apiece. He added an assist in a crucial Game 5 win at Reunion Arena, and that set the stage for a return to St. Louis.

In Game 6, Hull fired five shots on goal (he had no shots in Game 5) and tallied two assists. He set up Derek Plante's tying goal in the third period and then was the only assist on Mike Modano's overtime game-winner.

It was a huge statement about Hull's overall game that he was the assist man and not the goal scorer.

"Mike's goal was such a Ken Hitchcock goal, too," Hull said. "To get the assist on that was very rewarding. To take the puck to the net and have Mike crash the net and bang it in, that was a great reward, because St. Louis was a really tough team and they took that kind of stuff away. They were a solid defensive team, so you didn't get a ton of shots. You had to work for it."

And Hull worked hard.

"I think that's one of the things that was most underrated about Brett," Hitchcock said. "He was really tough and he worked really hard. He wanted to win as badly as anybody, and I think we saw that in the Blues series."

Hull said he looks back now and is thankful for Hitchcock and his time with a veteran-laden Stars team.

"I learned from Coach Hitchcock and the rest of the team that whole year," Hull said. "When I was growing up, all I ever thought about was scoring goals. I went to bed thinking about scoring goals and I woke up thinking about scoring goals. But they taught me how to play a better overall game. I discovered there were other things you could do to help your team win, and that helped me when I wasn't scoring goals.

"Driving to the rink with Guy Carbonneau every day, I learned so much," Hull said. "He would talk about things that I didn't even think about. I always enjoyed passing, but we would talk about defense and where to put the puck and how if you did that over and over it would pay off. Being with all of them made me a better player."

And beating the Blues made him a more confident player. After getting two goals in the first two series in 1999, he scored six goals in the next two series, including the Cup winner. He knew that he could do more than just score goals, but he also knew that a big reason he was signed by the Stars was to score that goal.

"I think he really added that element and made us better," said defenseman Craig Ludwig. "We were a great defensive team, but we needed someone to score 'that' goal. Brett scored a lot of them."

Hull did the phone interview for this story from Cabo San Lucas. He was on a trip down there visiting a resort when the shelter in place started, so he and his wife decided to stay. It's a good setup. The pool and the club are closed, but Hull can golf every day and hike trails.

The property is run by Discovery Land Company, and Hull is working for them. He lives in Nashville and is helping to sell a new community called Troubadour, which is a somewhat similar task to what he does as executive vice president of the Blues.

"It's a lot of golf and talking and just showing people what we have," Hull said. "They're both very similar."

It's a good life for a man who loves golf and now is a part of three Cup winners -- in 1999 with the Stars, in 2002 with the Detroit Red Wings, and last season with the Blues. There is a perfect symmetry to all of that. He went to St. Louis as part of his journey with the Stars, and then returned there to help the Blues finally get their own Cup.

"There was a boatload of people saying when I was leaving St. Louis, 'You're never going to win with Brett Hull on your team,'" Hull said. "To go to Dallas and be the missing piece of the puzzle that's going to help them win their Cup, and then to go out and score the goal in overtime -- that was something special."

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heikais a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on Twitter @MikeHeika, and listen to his podcast.