Still regarded as one of the league’s all-time shooters and scorers, Hull ranks 22nd on The Athletic ‘s list of the top 100 players of the NHL’s post-expansion era.Īnd Sheehy wouldn’t be the first or last to be caught off guard along the way, including Hull himself. 3 in career goals behind only Gretzky and Gordie Howe, though he has since been passed by Jaromir Jagr and Alex Ovechkin. Hull would go on to score 741 times over 19 seasons, finishing his career in 2005 at No. Neither shooting low nor toning it down, of course, would end up being part of Hull’s legacy.

“It’s obvious to me now that he was toning it down.” “Why didn’t you say you ‘want to go snap 80 in this league?’ I mean, c’mon, only 50? Talk about shooting low. “Here we are years later, and I’m going, ‘Brett, why did you understate yourself?'” Sheehy says, laughing hysterically. And a season after that, he scored 86, which still stands as the third-highest single-season total in league history, behind Wayne Gretzky’s 92 and 87. Louis Blues, he blew past his bold prediction, with 72 in 1989-90. Just three years later, and after a trade to the St. However, it wouldn’t be long before he was putting up 50 goals - and more - in the NHL. Hull did have 50 goals the following season, but it was with Calgary’s AHL affiliate. I mean, you think you’re going to snap 50 in the NHL?'”Īnd Sheeny was right. “I said, ‘You know Brett, you’re living with me and you can say whatever you want with me, but when you’re around the other guys, you might want to tone that down a little bit. “Now he’s a kid right out of college and he says, ‘Yeah, I’ll go snap 50 in this league,'” Sheehy remembers. Still, the confidence he had coming into the league was staggering, and one day he said something that made Sheehy gasp. Hull was coming off a season for University of Minnesota-Duluth in which he scored 52 goals in 42 games, and was two seasons removed from a 105-goal 56-game junior season. Hull took him up on the offer, so Sheehy got a good opportunity to witness the young right winger’s earliest NHL impressions. “Why don’t you come to my house and live with me for the rest of the year?” Sheehy asked him. He figured he’d offer him something a bit more comfortable. He knew that Hull, like a lot of prospects, had been put up in a local hotel during his postseason stay. Neil Sheehy, now an NHL agent, was a 25-year-old defenseman for those Flames.

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