After All-Star sniper Brett Hull netted 72 goals during the St. Louis Blues’ 1989-90 NHL campaign, area puck-heads certainly had high expectations heading into the ensuing season’s follow-up. With center Adam Oates serving up high-precision feeds specifically designed for quick release, the “Golden Brett” seemed destined to equal, if not top, the previous personal benchmark.
Little did Blues’ fans know how high the total would inevitably reach back then…and how it would continue to remain an eye-opening yardstick for both the future Hall of Famer and for those that followed hockey locally a quarter-century later.
Possessing a rapid-fire skill set on the ice, combined with charismatic charm off-ice, Hull was more than just a recognizable name amongst sports fans internally. Jerseys bearing his name and number, combined with t-shirts and posters displaying his likeness, were commonplace in St. Louis.
But with both an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman” and nationally-viewed commercial advertisements during the turn of the decade, the right winger’s total exposure climbed to unprecedented heights barreling into his upcoming campaign.
The collective cache was pretty impressive for a St. Louis-based athlete…even more so for a blue-collar hockey player.
The chase to equal the prior season’s tally was blistering from the onset. Hull collected seven goals in the Blues’ first eight tussles and he pushed the kitty to eleven following a hat trick in team’s next game against Toronto on October 24, 1990.
The frenetic goal-per-game pace continued as the season progressed. The Golden Brett collected goals 49 and 50 in the Note’s forty-ninth grind of the year, a 9-4 road duke over Detroit, on January 25, 1991. Another pair was tallied the following day at The Arena against the Red Wings to push the total to 52.
Then after back-to-back absences due to injury, the only games Hull missed that season, #16 returned to the line-up on February 2, 1991 and picked up a goal and an assist in a 5-4 triumph over New Jersey.
Continuous red-lampers, and ensuing personal milestones of numbers 60 and 70, were achieved in rapid succession. In retrospect that season, the other 20 NHL teams competing could not contain Hull as he proceeded to score more than one goal against every franchise except Philadelphia, who held the winger to a solo twine tickler in a three-game docket. On the opposite end of the ledger, the Maple Leafs allowed 13 Hull goals in eight games.
On March 19, 1991 at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland, and in the Blues’ 74th game of the season, Hull reached the elite “80 Goal Club” in a 2-1 victory over Washington, solely joining Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky in that achievement.
As an exclamation point at the team’s final game of the regular season, a 2-1 victory over Minnesota on March 31, 1991, Hull beat North Stars’ net minder Brian Heyward to record goal #86 and secure placement in the NHL stat book with the personal pinnacle. The accumulation positioned the Golden Brett third historically in goals scored during a regular season, trailing Gretzky’s totals in 1981-82 (92) and 1983-84 (87).
Hull easily outpaced 1990-91’s goal-scoring groomsmen as Boston’s Cam Neely, Calgary’s Theo Fleury and Detroit’s Steve Yzerman each had 51 goals that season to woefully trail. Of Hull’s 86 tallies posted during the magical campaign, 57 were even-strength, 29 were collected via the power-play and, yep, none were empty netters.
The Golden Brett won both the Hart Trophy and the Lester B. Pearson Award (later re-named the Ted Lindsay Award) to conclude the final chapter of the most prolific season of scoring in Blues’ history: 86 goals and 45 assists for 131 points.
One can’t help but wonder, had Hull not missed the aforementioned pair of games due to injury, would he have been able to leapfrog Gretzky’s 87 and place second all-time in that category?
Hard to speculate, but no doubt, Number 16’s collection of 86 goals that was achieved 25 years ago today remains one of the Blues’ most memorable entries historically.
Tomorrow night, the ‘Note hosts the Boston Bruins at Scottrade Center. For fans possessing a ticket, a visit to his statue outside 14th and Clark is encouraged in order to knowledge an achievement recorded a quarter-century ago.
We may never witness another goal accumulation like that in a season locally in our lifetime but we can surely reflect on that moment for all the right reasons.
Via YouTube, here is a 45-minute video feature, “Hockey’s Top Gun,” a recap of Hull’s 1990-91 record-setting season combined with rare footage, produced by Bud Sports in 1991.
