The Devil and Bobby Hull: How Hockey's Original Million-Dollar Man Became the Game's Lost Legend
In 1972 Bobby Hull was the Golden Jet, the most prolific scorer in the history of the National Hockey League. And then he walked away. Not from the game but from the NHL. Though he landed the biggest contract in professional sports, including a $1-million bonus up front, his decision to jump to the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association wasn't based only on finances. It was payback, a piece of the ugliest grudge in the game: the hard feelings between Hull and the Wirtz family, owners of the Chicago Black Hawks.Though Hull still had some great moments in the '70s, many went unseen by hockey fans and his legacy started to unravel. So did his reputation when his deeply troubled marriage ended and his unseemly personal life was aired in divorce court.The Devil and Bobby Hullis an unauthorized warts-and-all treatment of Hull's very public mid-life crisis in the 1970s, a time when sports were undergoing a sea change, when money mattered as much as or more than games, when an athlete's life away from the arena became fair game for the media.Award-winning writer Gare Joyce weaves a fascinating and well-rounded narrative out of the prime and decline of Robert Marvin Hull, supported by interviews with Hull himself and many others who played with him and knew him throughout his career. This is a must-read book for hockey fans. It presents a compelling case that Hull is the most influential player the game has ever seen and its most unfairly overlooked superstar.