Cure Your Case Of The Mondays With This Assortment of Brett Hull Stories

When it comes to who the greatest of all time is in hockey on the ice, it’s almost irrefutable *pats self on back for using a big word* that Wayne Gretzky is hockey’s greatest. However when it comes to OFF the ice, there are few in the history of the game quite like the beautiful legend above: Brett Hull. From his playing days to stealing the show at the Blues Stanley Cup parade, the man just has one of the biggest personalities in sports. There’s not a single body part I wouldn’t sacrifice to have beers with this man. Tell me it has to be a testicle and I’d ask you right or left, if it be fingers or toes I would simply ask how many. Whether it be his in-game antics or his post game shenanigans, the amount of stories that have came out over the years is enough for a full blown TV series. But for now, you’ll have to settle for this little gathering of some Hully gems (including how he ended up on stage at the ’19 parade)

Kelly Chase and Brett Hull’s East STL Joy Ride…with their coach’s Jaguar.

Our first Hully anecdote takes us to a fateful game for the Blues in 1999, when after the game both Hull and teammate Kelly Chase realized they needed a ride home from the game. After waiting in the arena parking lot for a bit, Chase was joined by Hull who had the keys to their coach’s Jaguar. Obviously confused how this happened, Chase asked Hull how he got Coach to lend them his car, to which Hull shrugged and replied “no big deal”. The two beauties go out for a night on the town in East STL, which if you live in the area you know East STL is essentially like if Baghdad and Vegas had an illegitimate child. At 3:30 AM outside of a night club, they attempt to return home. However the keys broke off in the keyhole of the Jaguar due to the cold, stranding the two gentlemen. Lucky for them the nightclub security knew they were in the presence of two STL celebrities and helped them out. And by help them out I mean bring out beers, a bottle of rum, and starting a bonfire in a trashcan. A full blown East STL nightclub tailgate with two NHLers (who have practice in a few hours at this point). For their generosity, Hull treated the security guys to breakfast at one of the nicest restaurants in STL: Eat Rite Diner.

Fast forward a couple of hours and the two somehow, someway, make it to practice on time. Hull nonchalantly tosses the keys to the jag on coaches desk as he walks in, however Kelly Chase was not so lucky. You see, Hull didn’t ask for permission for those keys. And since it was only Kelly Chase in Coach’s office, you only heard the following quote “YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE DOING THIS SHIT, YOU’LL BE SENT BACK DOWN TO PEORIA DOING THIS SHIT!”. Turns out taking the coach’s Jaguar out for a joy ride is indeed a big deal.

2. The only person who decides it’s time for Brett Hull to come off the ice is Brett Hull.

This one is a little two parter, as Hully made it a habit of refusing to his own coach/teammates to come off the ice throughout his career for sometimes hilarious reasons.

Los Angeles is obviously likely a great city for players to go out in after games, especially when you get after it like the Golden Brett. One night in a game against the Kings, Hull had been sitting on the bench most of the third period in a tie game because then Blues coach Brian Sutter didn’t trust Hull to defend in his own end to not give up the game winner. Fast forward to near the end of the game and Hull decides to take matters into his own hands by hopping over the boards on his own for the next face off. Teammates and coaches alike yelled at Hull to get off the ice, to which Brett replied “FUCK OFF RICHIE”. After almost 2 minutes or so of playing zero defense (for those who aren’t that into hockey an average shift for a forward is ~30-45 seconds), Hull gets a breakout pass and takes it up the ice to snipe the game winner with 25 seconds left. His only words to the bench? “Like we’re going to overtime in LA,” with a smirk you could likely see from the top row of the arena. The man had his priorities straight, and that night his priority was cracking chilly ones on Sunset Boulevard.

Not only was it brutal playing against Hull because the man could essentially score on you at will, sometimes that ruthlessness came to his own team as well. A young Nathan Lafayette learned this the hard way, as one game he was simply trying to replace Hull on the ice after a 5 minute power play shift for Hull. Instead of peacefully getting off the ice, Hull skates towards the bench, but as he sees Lafayette he continues skating by the bench and shouts to his coach “Not Him!” and continues his already 5 minute long shift. Poor Lafayette, just trying to make it in the league and sub in for his teammate and just gets eviscerated by being told he is unworthy of even subbing in for Hully.

3. Hull Suffers some shadow injuries

Back to the Chaser and Hully buddy comedy. One night after a road game Chase is sound asleep in their hotel room, when he hears a certain drunken hotel-roomie stumbling in the doorway. The NEXT sound he heard was Hully taking a tumble and smashing his head into the TV hard enough to potentially earn an “upper body injury”. While Chase is borderline pissing himself in his bed laughing trying to pretend he’s still asleep, he hears another crash as Hull had stumbled and whipped his ankle on the corner of the wall somehow. A few hours later in the morning Chaser tries waking the sleeping beauty for practice, which as you could predict didn’t go well. Hull’s first attempt to exit the bed is greeted with another fall, as his ankle is twice the size it is supposed to be. Hull’s response? “I can’t fuckin practice today, I blocked a shot in the leg and took a high stick to the forehead last night!”

4. A behind the scenes look at “WE WENT BLUES”.

If you are a Blues fan in the slightest, you’re aware that Hull stole the show at the 2019 Cup Parade with an incrddibBackstage at the Blues insane Stanley Cup parade Chase is hanging with his alumni buddies including the Golden Brett who by Chase’s words “I could tell he’d gotten into the tequila early”. When out of nowhere Brett simply proclaims “I’M GOIN ON STAGE”, and walks right past everyone including the stage security (that’s right STL fans, he wasn’t scheduled to give that “speech”). He then proceeds to create one of most famous quotes from that Stanley Cup run, speaking to the estimated >1 million at the parade that day “You can say let’s go Blues all you want, but you know what? We went. We don’t have to go anymore, because we went. So instead of saying let’s go Blues, we now say WE WENT BLUES.” Apparently one of the Blues execs was trying to get the other Blues alumni to reel in the drunk stallion, but no one in their right mind was interrupting that biblical speech.