Robert Marvin Hull, born January 3, 1939 in Pointe Anne, Ontario, Canada, is regarded as one of the greatest hockey players to ever play the game.
Nicknamed, "The Golden Jet", Bobby Hull led the Chicago Blackhawks to their first, and only Stanley Cup, in 1961. Bobby Hull was famous for the speed and accuracy of his 120 mph slap "shot," that many others would soon try to imitate.
In 1966, he became the first NHL player to score more than 50 goals in one season, earning a 7-minute standing ovation for his 51st goal. He played 23 professional seasons in hockey from 1957 to 1980, scoring 672 goals.
His NHL awards:
- Won the Art Ross Memorial Trophy as the NHL's scoring champion three times;
- Twice voted the Hart Trophy as the league's most valuable player;
- Ten times he was named to the NHL's First All-Star team.
- Lady Byng Memorial Trophy (1965)
- Lester Patrick Trophy (1969)
- Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983.
Bobby Hull won higher salaries for his fellow players, and gave credibility to a new rival league up against the entrenched NHL, when he jumped to the fledgling World Hockey Association's (WHA) Winnipeg Jets for an unheard of $1,000,000 a year contract in 1972. Though the league folded in 1979, it was reborn in 2003 and named Bobby Hull as its commissioner.
In 1998, Hull got involved in a contrversy by the Russian media, when he allegedly made pro-Nazi comments. He later claimed the interviewer misunderstood him in the translation.
His son, Brett Hull, plays in the National Hockey League.