By MILTON RICHMAN
United Press International Sports Writer

NEW YORK. — One newspaper put it this way:

Oh, Hull!

Since a lot of people here in New York were living and dying with the Rangers, hoping somehow some way they could make it into the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 21 years, and since the paper which used that backpage headline after the Chicago Black Hawks eliminated the Rangers Sunday happened to be a local one, you can figure out pretty easily how the desk man meant those two words to be read.
They'd be read much differently in Chicago.

Bobby Hull is a bigger man there right now than Mayor Daley. For awhile there in the semifinals with the Rangers some people were beginning to worry that Bobby Hull may be losing his touch. He just couldn't score any goals and there was a feeling that at 32 he not only was losing his hair but also his touch.

For six games Hull had been limited to one goal. But here it was the seventh and deciding contest, the score was tied 2-2 in the final period and Lou Angotti ferried a faceoff passover to him.

Bobby Hull got good wood on the puck and Ed Giacomin, the Rangers' goalie, never had a chance. He managed only to wave as the rubber sailed high and past him into the net and that, as they say, was the old ball game although Chico Maki fired another goal into an open cage in the waning seconds to pad the final score to 4-2.

It is laboring the obvious to say Hull's goal was a big one. Few realize how big. Hull does though.

Only a few years back Bobby Hull was the same dominant force for Chicago that Bobby Orr now is for Boston. The Hawks played hockey only one way. Offense, offense and more offense. But then they finished in the basement two years ago and decided to change their entire style. They became a defensive club and Bobby Hull, the celebrated Golden Jet, had to change along with them whether he liked it or not.

The change came hard for Hull.

“I was used to having the puck all the time, skating with it and playing 45 minutes of the game,” he says. “After the club and I had a little contract difficulties I guess I didn't have the right attitude to begin with.

When I came back the team was playing very well defensively. They wanted us wingmen to just go up and down in a straight line and simply watch the guys we were playing against so that they wouldn't do anything against you.

“That's what I did. I started going up and down and watching my guy and I just got into playing the different style of hockey. Oh, every once in awhile you like to go back, pick up the puck and go with it. I expect you always have something left that you had before.”

Bobby Hull showed everybody he did last Sunday afternoon.

That was the old Bobby Hull out there, not the new one. He was playing offensively, not defensively. He was playing the way he always had for most of the 14 years he has been with the Hawks.

Now with the Montreal Canadiens coming up in the finals, Hull will return to the Hawks' present style of play. That means he'll be playing defensively again because that figures to be the way all the rest of the Hawks are going to play the Canadiens. Why abandon a successful formula, one that brought you two straight division championships and this far up to now?

Don't become startled though if Bobby Hull suddenly returns to his old way. Particularly if the series goes right down to the wire.

“. . . every once in awhile you like to go back, pickup the puck and go with it…”