Thunder on the Left

Pro hockey's brightest new star is a baby-faced youngster with blond curly hair: 20-year-old Bobby Hull of the Chicago Black Hawks. His fullback's legs let him flash to a halt in a swirl of shaved ice, start again in a burst of speed that may well be the most explosive in the National Hockey League. He is solid enough (5 ft. 10 1/2 in., 190 Ibs.) to hold off a defense man with one thick arm while stickhandling the puck with the other. And when he slaps one of his lefthanded shots, the puck is a black blur that can twist the goalie's thick ash stick in his hand.

After slashing through Toronto's defenses to score three goals in his team's 7-4 victory, the kid from Chicago started this week tied for the lead in league scoring with none other than Montreal's Jean Beliveau (19 goals, 21 assists v. 20 goals, 20 assists). Although Hull is playing his first season at left wing and only his third in the N.H.L., Toronto Coach Punch Imlach rates him second only to Beliveau, and Chicago fans are already hoping that some day their young star will lead the team to its initial first-place finish.

Son of a cement-plant foreman and Canadian-born--like nearly every other player in the N.H.L.--Hull first handled a stick at the age of four back in Point Anne, Ont. By the time he was 14, he looked so good just playing junior-league hockey in Belleville, Ont. that he caught the eye of a touring Black Hawk scout, who reserved the likely prospect for Chicago by signing him to an option contract for a bonus so small that he now says: "I'm ashamed to mention it." Pro hockey is one of the toughest of all sports, but Hull revels in its body contact, can fend for himself so well in the mayhem that he has lost only two teeth in three seasons. In fact, Hull often pretends not to hear the call from the bench that his replacement is coming on ice. Says Coach Rudy Pilous: "Bobby will find himself skating with a couple of 'strange' linemen, and instead of doing two minutes, he'll do four." Shrugs Hull: "The more I play, the more I want to play."

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