There are a few aspects of Hull's legacy as a hockey player that I find worthy of examination. The WHA was very important in the 70s to giving players more power around the careers, and Hull's commitment to them, and the subsequent increase in player salaries is a significant part of his legacy. On the other hand, the legacy of the WHA is more devalued the further away we get from it, as it's barely relevant in 2 NHL markets, and salaries continue to increase. Nobody really cares about the WHA as a league anymore, as it's been over 40 years since it folded. It's seen as an innovative league that ultimately contributed to over-expansion, and the majority of players as minor leaguers. Hull's 400 games in the WHA have thus become almost irrelevant to his legacy. He's remembered as being a great player there, but his stats aren't NHL stats. The same sort of thing happens with Jagr's sojourn in the KHL in the mid-2000s. He did well over there, yet nobody cares because it wasn't in the NHL.
The second part of his legacy involves his position as #5 on both the 2008 and 2018 top-100 lists. He was a fairly consensus pick both times, and yet if we hosted another project this year, he might not finish in the top 10. His legacy as the premiere goal-scoring winger has been almost completely swallowed up by Alex Ovechkin. When his competition was Maurice Richard and Mike Bossy (Howe being seen as more a playmaking wing, comparitively speaking), both of whom played less games in the NHL than him, his litany of statistical accomplishments (the 7 Rockets, the 3 Ross, et cetera) gave his career a glitter that other players were hard-pressed to match. Now that Ovechkin's coming up on 300 more games played in the NHL, with him averaging 50 goals/82 games played at age 20, age 24, age 28, age 32, and age 36, just a remarkable legacy of consistency, Hull's NHL career starts getting nit-picked because someone came along where you compare the two careers and Hull's about as good, but he's not better. I feel like the same sort of thing could occur with Beliveau and Crosby in the coming years, maybe a little less so because Beliveau's legacy is so tied up in Cups, rather than overwhelming statistical dominance. He was really good for a really long time, just like Crosby, but he's not better. Neither Crosby nor Ovechkin have really added to their legacies over the past 5 seasons, but they have added a bit over 300 games apiece in line with their career averages as they age gracefully into the back half of their careers.
Finally, like the Richard first-hand viewers aged out of contributing to the discourse, so too now are the Hull viewers. The young ones who watched Hull growing up are now retired. That lack of nostalgia towards him, combined with the rougher image around Hull's post-retirement life, is likely to lead towards less of a hagiography around his hockey career, unlike someone such as Beliveau, whose legacy was burnished by his post-hockey image.
