He and Stan Mikita were pioneers in curving blades back when goalies didn’t wear masks, and Hull’s hulking power and errant accuracy must have been sheer terror: he once told Sean Fitz-Gerald, then with the National Post, that the puck went top corner or second balcony.

He was a giant, an icon: the big-skating blond with the almost mythical strength of an Ontario farm boy, turning hockey into a dramatic one-on-one gunfight with the goalie rather than a messy scrum out front. Hull may have ignored the other end of the ice, but he was probably the greatest left-winger in history until Alexander Ovechkin came along. Winnipeg’s free-flowing offence with Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg and Hull was a precursor to Edmonton of the 1980s Glen Sather built the Oilers with that kind of skating and puck control and skill in mind. The WHA deal was seismic, and Hull ushered in the new era of big money in the game. Michael Farber, formerly of Sports Illustrated, has called Hull the first modern hockey player and you can see that argument. And he left a huge hockey legacy and a hell of a mess behind. He was erratic, too, or maybe the word was consistent, and it became apparent over time. His slapshot echoed through history, and Bobby’s shot was devastating if erratic. The first man to exceed 50 goals in a season, a Chicago Blackhawks great, the man who jumped to Winnipeg and the World Hockey Association for a million bucks, the Golden Jet. You can’t write hockey history without Bobby Hull, though for a time hockey tried.

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