Join the Discussion "Brett Hull has plenty of ideas about how the NHL could improve the game and make it more exciting for fans and players." Check out his suggestions and let's hear what you think.

Related Resources • Red Wings Versus Hurricanes: Game by Game The story of Detroit's 2002 run to the Stanley Cup. • Detroit Red Wings Resources Articles, media links, the Red Wings' website and more.

Elsewhere on the Web • Brett Hull by the Numbers Carrer NHL stats

But like his father, Brett Hull chafed against the standard-issue, "aw shucks" hockey persona. In the early 1990s, when he started scoring as many as 86 goals in a single season for the St. Louis Blues, the microphones began crowding under his chin. Hull took to the limelight with no pretence of false modesty. He liked to talk. He had opinions. Along with Mario Lemieux, Brett Hull was one of those rare stars willing to piss people off, criticize the league, even free associate on a few fresh ideas. Sometimes he was yanking everyone's chain or working the game to his advantage, but it made the sports pages more interesting.

Reporters swarmed his locker like flies, eager to spice up the usual dreary mix of recycled player quotes. But they also helped hang a reputation on him. Hull was framed as a smart-ass, too uppity, not grateful enough, with the added implication that an individual in the room is an individual on the ice: "Brett Hull? Great hands. Big mouth. Not a team player, not a winner. After all, the Blues never do much in the playoffs, do they?"

The loose cannon has stabilized somewhat over the years. But whatever you think of his ready smirk and quick tongue, the old "not a winner" reputation has long since been exposed as a PR scam. The Blues, who let him walk away as a free agent in 1998, still can't do much in the playoffs. But as a Dallas Star and Detroit Red Wing, Brett Hull has cemented his status as one of the top playoff performers of his generation.

When Hull opened the scoring for Detroit in game four of the 2002 Stanley Cup Final, it marked the 100th playoff goal of his career. Only Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Jari Kurri have more, and they have all played more playoff games than Hull. Gretzky leads the list with 122 goals in 208 Stanley Cup games, compared to 100 goals in 186 games for Hull (as of the end of the 2001-02 season). Makes you wonder how Hull would have fared as an Edmonton Oiler in the 1980s, slamming home one-timers on perfect feeds from Gretzky.

And why does it seem that he always scores big goals, the ones that turn a game around? Because he does. Hull now has 23 playoff games-winners. Only Gretzky, with 24, has more.

Hull is a lot more popular these days, especially when he suggests, as he did recently, that about 75 percent of NHL players are overpaid. In fact, many reporters seem to treat him with too much reverence, hanging on his every word. On the ice, he is still seen by many as a goal-scoring savant, a guy who can't do anything except shoot the puck in the net. It's an unfair tag, though scoring goals is hardly the worst single skill to be stuck with, especially if you can rack up 700 of them. Based on his numbers, if not his mouth, Brett Hull is a first-ballot Hall of Famer.