panoo

Posted by George James Malik
July 26, 2007 05:40AM

Former Detroit Red Wing Brett Hull, who scored his 700th goal as a Wing, admitted to SI's Al Muir that he played for the vast majority of his career with an illegally-curved stick blade. Hull doesn't believe that NHL rule that once limited stick curvature to 1/2" (it's now 3/4") had any merit:

July 25, Sports Illustrated: "It's the stupidest rule on earth," said Hull, never one to hide his honest opinion. "It was put in to protect the goalies back when they did it, but now you can shoot a bullet at them and you can't hurt them, so I don't really understand why they need it. Obviously it's there, but it's something a lot of guys ignore."

For Hull, the possessor of the most deadly one-timer in league history, bending his blade -- along with the rules -- was the difference between an average career and one for the ages.

"I had an illegal stick all the time and it wasn't so much that I thought I was cheating, but, you know, I wouldn't have got 300 goals in this league unless I'd had that stick that I used. I couldn't shoot it without that curve."

If you head into the gift shop at one of the two Cheli's Chili locations, and are really, really polite, you might get your hands on one of Hull's old Easton Z-Bubble sticks. His blade's curvature easily exceeds 1.5," and he used a 62 stick flex (most sticks have a rating of 75 to 110), which resulted in sticks that bent like wet noodles.

Hull claims that the Red Wings' equipment managers were once engaged in team-wide cheating:

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