Study shows hockey great Bobby Hull had CTE

Former Chicago Blackhawks legend and Hockey Hall of Fame member Bobby Hull tested positive for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the brain-withering disease linked to repetitive brain trauma in contact sports, a researcher and Hull’s family announced Wednesday morning.

The Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation said Hull is the 17th known former NHL player and the third member of the Hall of Fame, after Henri Richard and Stan Mikita, to have tested positive for CTE.

Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology for the VA Boston Healthcare System and director of the Boston University CTE Center, confirmed Hull was posthumously diagnosed with stage 2 (of four) CTE.

“Seeing the pain and heartache suffered by his lifetime friend Stan Mikita’s family, Bobby felt strongly no other family should have to endure CTE,” Deborah Hull, Bobby’s wife of 39 years, said in a statement. “He insisted on donating his brain, feeling as though it was his duty to help advance research on this agonizing disease.”

According to the statement, Hull struggled with many of the cognitive symptoms of CTE, such as short-term memory loss and impaired judgement, over nearly the last 10 years of his life.

Hull, who was known during his playing career as the Golden Jet because of his blond hair and speed on the ice, died in 2023 at the age of 84.

Other NHL players who have been diagnosed with CTE include Bob Probert, Derek Boogaard, Jeff Parker, Wade Belak, Larry Zeidel, Reggie Fleming, Rick Martin, Ralph Backstrom, Steve Montador, Zarley Zalapski, Todd Ewen and Dan Maloney.

Four former junior hockey players, who all died of suicide before the age of 30, have also tested positive for the disease.

Hull helped the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup in 1961, ending a 23-year title drought. He played 15 seasons in Chicago and is the franchise's career leader in goals scored with 604. Hull won back-to-back Hart Memorial Trophies as the league's most valuable player in 1964-65 and 1965-66, when he won the NHL scoring title for the third time in his career.

He also played in more than 400 games with the Winnipeg Jets, then in the upstart World Hockey Association, over seven seasons.

While the National Football League admitted in 2016 that a link exists between repeated brain trauma suffered in football and long-term neurological disorders, the NHL has consistently rejected the connection.

In April of 2022, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said that no such association has been established.

"We listen to the medical opinions on CTE, and I don't believe there has been any documented study that suggests that elements of our game result in CTE,” Bettman said in an interview with National Public Radio. “There have been isolated cases of players who have played the game [who] have had CTE. But it doesn't mean that it necessarily came from playing in the NHL.”

The National Hockey League Players' Association has rejected Bettman’s stance.

“It goes without saying that trauma to the brain can be harmful and we recognize, as the [U.S.] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has cited, that the research to date suggests that CTE is caused by repeated trauma to the brain, including concussions and sub-concussive events,” the players union wrote in a statement to TSN in 2019.

The NHL in 2018 settled a concussion-related lawsuit filed by more than 100 former players after a judge refused to approve the case to move forward as a class action.

Several former players – including Montador’s family – are continuing to pursue individual lawsuits against the league.