THE HULL STORY

Never one to stay quiet for long, Brett Hull remembers the moment he was left speechless.

One day in November, Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks wanted breakfast with Hull, owner of 741 goals and the man whose goal brought the Stars the Stanley Cup in 1999.

The meeting was after an overtime loss to the Kings, in which the Stars blew a four-goal lead in the third period and left them a woeful 7-7-3. Such meetings were not unusual, however, because as special assistant to Jim Lites, the club’s president, Hull was a sounding board for Hicks.

But Hicks wanted more than advice. He wanted Hull.

The Stars needed a jolt, Hicks told him that day. Lites and General Manager Doug Armstrong were out, said Hicks, who wanted Hull and Les Jackson as co-GMs.

“It came right out of left field,” Hull said. “I had no idea.”

No one is more surprised to see Hull in the role of a buttoned-down executive than the future Hall of Fame winger himself. The rumpled shirt and loosened tie he wears while watching his team take a surprising 2-0 first-round series lead over the defending champion Ducks suggests he is more cold beer than fine wine.

But the changes Hull and Jackson put into play have helped lift Dallas, which heads into Game 3 tonight at the American Airlines Center.

Management wasn’t a consideration when Hull retired in 2005. Now, in his crash course of running a team, he leans on Jackson, a veteran of the Stars’ front office who prefers to work behind the scenes.

Hull, with his quick smile and quicker wit, handles the public role, even starring in a Stars marketing campaign as the self-proclaimed “ambassador of fun.” He is serious, however, about winning.

“The ideas on how you run the scouting department and how you run an organization, he’s had in his mind for a long time,” Hull said of Jackson. “I think I almost learn something new every day.”

Having watched Dallas surge into first place into the Pacific Division, the two acquired former playoff MVP Brad Richards, the centerpiece of a five-player deal at the Feb. 26 trade deadline.

Richards, 27, struggled down the stretch, but no matter. He has had an impact in these playoffs, collecting an assist in the Game 1 win and a key insurance goal in Game 2.

“We got Brad Richards [from Tampa Bay] to be the next Mike Modano,” Hull said. “Mike is 37 years old. Mike Ribeiro is [28] years old. We needed a guy that was as talented as Mike Modano, just at a younger age.

“After the number of years that Mike has played, pretty soon he’s going to want to walk away. If you’re going to build a championship team, you have to be strong up the middle. When Mike leaves, we’ll have Ribeiro and Richards and we’ll still have that strong base.”

Hull knows change.

As a player, he was one of the loudest voices for change, firing off verbal slap shots as often as he launched his vaunted one-timers from the slot.

If he wasn’t railing against the NHL for allowing the clutching and grabbing of marquee players, Hull was suggesting that most of those players were making too much money.

But Hull bringing peace to a dressing room?

“He’s a confident guy,” Stars defenseman Philippe Boucher told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “He’s loose. He talks to the players. He jokes. He loosened up things at a time when we were an uptight team. It’s good to be around that.”

But there were thorny issues, including Hull’s longtime friendship with Modano.

“We were kind of concerned,” Modano said. “It’s no mystery, our type of relationship that him and I have. We do spend quite a bit of time together. He was in my wedding and we’ve been close friends.

“Things like that just aren’t going to stop because of the title of the job. Players know that and they understand that. They deal with it.”

Hull said he would quit if the friendship were at stake.

“You have to handle it with kid gloves,” Hull said. “Mike’s one of my best friends. It will not change my relationship with him and I will quit before it affects any friendship that I’ve had for a number of years.”

Hull is ranked as one of the NHL’s greatest scorers. His 741 goals put him third behind Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe. His outspokenness may put him above everyone.

Those who know him, however, say there’s more to Hull than the player who once said, “Do I catch flak because I’m so much smarter than everyone else? I don’t know.”

“A lot of what he said as a player made people think that he doesn’t take the game seriously,” said former NHL player Ray Ferraro, now a hockey analyst. “You don’t do what he did as a player without taking your craft seriously.”

Hull understands that he can’t always let loose now.

“If I run off all half-cocked, that’s fine as a player because you could get away with it,” he said. “As a manager, you’ve got a responsibility to the game and to your owner.”

Not that Hull is muzzled. Asked about his stint as an NBC analyst last season, he was emphatic. “I will never, ever do TV again,” he said. “I did not enjoy it all, felt like I was penned up. You sit there and you’re watching the game on the monitor. All of a sudden it’s intermission and you’ve got three minutes or a little longer within that. There’s highlights and there’s three guys talking.”

Ferraro agreed Hull needed more minutes.

“Hully gets these things in his head and they kind of evolve as he’s talking. . . . The 16 seconds Hully had wouldn’t work because you wouldn’t see the bigness of his personality.

“And Hully,” he said, “has a huge personality.”

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eric.stephens@latimes.com