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That was the year, too, when Bobby met his figure-skater wife, Joanne. Music, maestro, please. "It was at Christmas time. Joanne was performing in an ice show in Chicago. I showed up at the arena one day for practice, and there she was, swinging on the ice." Married two months later, the Hulls now have three children, all boys, all blond, all boisterous: Bob, 6; Blake, 5; and Brett, 3.
Hull's most vivid recollection of the 1960-61 season is the night Chicago beat Detroit 5-1 and won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 23 years—or, at least, the party afterward. "It was snowing so hard we couldn't get back to Chicago. We guzzled champagne in the locker room and on the bus ride to the airport, where they turned us away and we had to go back to the hotel in Detroit. The last thing I remember I was drinking beer out of somebody's hat and got sick as a dog." Hell-raising was S.O.P. for Hull in those days; on a wild train ride from Boston to Montreal, Bobby and Teammate Ron Murphy broke into a case of railroad flares, lit them and threw them into the other Black Hawks' roomettes. Several frantic hours and $599 worth of damage later, General Manager Tommy Ivan called a team meeting. "All right," demanded Ivan, "who did it?" "I decided somebody better say something," says Bobby, "so I piped up: 'I did, sir.' Ivan just said, That's all I wanted to know,' and walked away."
Ivan has long since forgotten that episode. "The incident that sticks most in my mind," he says, "is the '63 Stanley Cup playoffs against Detroit." It sticks in Hull's, too: every time he looks in a mirror he gets a reminder. In the first game against the Red Wings, Bobby scored two goals. In the second, charging the Red Wings' net, he was about to pass off to a teammate when Detroit's Bruce MacGregor spun around suddenly and caught Hull flush on the bridge of the nose with the heel of his stick. "People in the stands later said it sounded like a rifleshot," says Bobby. "It knocked me to my knees, but I was able to make it to the dressing room under my own power. When the doctor finally got there, I was bleeding all over the place. 'Son,' he said, 'I was on duty for the Zale-Graziano fight, but I've never seen a nose like that.' He didn't get through with me until after midnight."