Former Chicago Blackhawks participant Bobby Hull is launched to followers through the NHL hockey crew’s conference in Chicago on July 26, 2019. Hull’s household introduced he was affected by CTE — the mind situation often known as persistent traumatic encephalopathy when he died in 2023.
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Amr Alfiky/AP
The Corridor of Fame hockey player Bobby Hull had persistent traumatic encephalopathy — the degenerative neurological illness known as CTE when he died in 2023, based on his household.
Hull, a two-time NHL Most worthy participant and Stanley Cup winner, was often known as “The Golden Jet” for his electrical play, bruising hits and marvelous goal-scoring talents. His career spanned greater than twenty years, principally within the Nineteen Sixties and 70s with the Chicago Blackhawks.
His spouse launched the outcomes of his autopsy mind tissue evaluation on Wednesday by way of the Concussion Legacy Basis. In a news release, the group says it hopes to boost consciousness for the long-term results of repetitive head impacts in hockey and encourage help for analysis. Hull’s household donated his mind to the Boston University CTE Center after he handed away in 2023 at age 84.
Deborah Hull stated her husband felt strongly that no household ought to have endure CTE. “He insisted on donating his mind, feeling as if it was his responsibility to assist advance analysis on this agonizing illness.” She stated her husband knew his Corridor of Fame profession got here with a value. Within the final decade of his life, she says he struggled with many cognitive signs of CTE, corresponding to short-term reminiscence loss and impaired judgment.
CTE can solely be recognized with an post-mortem of the mind, which means it could solely be detected after demise.
Bobby Hull of the Chicago Blackhawks skates down the ice with the puck throughout a hockey recreation towards the Boston Bruins on Jan. 7, 1968. Hull would grow to be one of many Nationwide Hockey League’s 100 best gamers. His spouse says repeated collisions throughout his Corridor of Fame profession led to his autopsy analysis of CTE.
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As NPR reported in 2024, the hyperlink between American soccer and CTE is well-known. However analysis on different sports activities had lagged behind, even for contact sports activities like ice hockey. That modified in December when researchers at Boston College accomplished the most important research to this point establishing a relationship between an athlete’s odds of creating CTE and the size of their profession in ice hockey (Hull’s was one of many brains within the research). The authors decided the longer an athlete performed, the extra seemingly he was to have the illness.
Hull is the highest-profile former NHL participant to be recognized with CTE.
NPR’s Becky Sullivan contributed reporting.
