Ice Hockey: The Well-Mannered Mesomorph

Only 35 sec. were left on the clock. The Boston Bruins benched their goalie, sent an extra forward into the game, mounted a desperate attack. But a Chicago player picked off the puck and passed it to a burly blond with No. 9 on the back of his Black Hawks uniform. Gathering it in at full speed, Bobby Hull rocketed down the rink. At the blue line, a Boston defenseman unlimbered a vicious body check. Almost casually, Hull bounced the defenseman aside, leaned forward, and flicked the puck straight into the Boston net. The red light flashed, the buzzer rang; Hull skated off the ice, to a standing ovation from the Chicago Stadium fans. He had scored his second goal of the night, the 250th of his N.H.L. career—and the Black Hawks had beaten the Bruins, 7-5.

Rare Treat. Cheers are a rare treat for the Black Hawks—the only team in the National Hockey League that has never won a championship. “If we won 69 games and lost only one,” grouses Goalie Glenn Hall, “the fans would boo us for that one loss.” But things are looking up. Last week’s victory over Boston was the Hawks’ fifth straight. Three nights later, they made it six in a row, shellacking the front-running Montreal Canadiens 6-3, to move within a game of the league lead.

Ask anybody in Chicago how come, and they start talking about Left Wing Bobby Hull, 25, whose sensational scoring streak is the talk of the young season. In 27 games, Hull has scored 27 goals, close to one-third of his team’s total and more than twice as many as anybody else in the N.H.L. Against the Canadiens last week, he got two—plus two assists:—and only a prolonged slump or injury can keep him from passing Maurice (“Rocket”) Richard’s mark of 50, a season record that has been tied twice in 19 years (once by Hull) but never beaten.

Hull is the N.H.L.’s fastest skater (a Canadian research institute clocked him at 28.3 m.p.h. on a typical dash down the ice), and its hardest shooter: his left-handed slap shot zips toward the goal at 118 m.p.h.—19 m.p.h. faster than the fastest measured pitch in baseball. Even his backhand tops 90 m.p.h. “Stopping one of Hull’s shots on the pads is like being slugged by a sledge hammer,” says Toronto Goalie Johnny Bower, and when New York’s Jacques Plante tried to block one of Hull’s slap shots with his gloved hand, it numbed his arm all the way to the elbow. The research institute concluded that Hull (at 5 ft. 10½ in.. 194 Ibs.) is a “perfect muscular mesomorph”—which is more or less what his opponents have been saying all along. “Somebody ought to put hobbles on him,” growls Detroit’s Gordie Howe.

Come to Play. A prodigy from the backwoods of Ontario, Hull signed his first pro contract at 14 (for a bonus so small that “I’m ashamed to mention it now”), cracked the big leagues in 1957 at 18. Since then, he has led the N.H.L. three times in goal scoring, twice in total points (goals and assists). The marks of his trade show on his face; it is crosshatched with scars, and his two front teeth are gone. But Hull has missed only eight games in his career because of injury. He scored eight goals in the 1963 Stanley Cup playoffs despite a shattered nose and cheekbone, and his manners are practically faultless: so far this season, he has spent only 16 min. in the penalty box.

“Bobby just loves to play this game,” says Black Hawks Coach Billy Reay. “He can’t get enough of it.” Last week against Boston, Hull was on ice a full 35 min.—playing left wing on one Black Hawks line, filling in for an injured teammate at right wing on another line, substituting on power plays when Boston had a man in the penalty box, serving on the Hawks’ own special penalty-killing squad. Said Bobby afterward: “I could have gone some more.”