BRETT HULL Vet still can play, but future pondered

The 39-year-old doesn't know if he will be playing hockey again next season.
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DALLAS -- Brett Hull may one day match Gordie Howe's 801 career NHL goals.
It just might take him until 2007.
At 39, Hull is proving he still can play a young man's game, and he might continue long into the future. But what he can't prove is that there will be a 2004-05 season.
"That's pretty much it right there," Hull said this week. "You want to plan for the future, you want to say you can do this or do that, but who really knows? Bottom line, I don't know when hockey will start up after next summer."
He wants to play
Still, Hull knows he wants to play more. He wants to play, in fact, until he can't do it anymore. He wants to keep playing, because, well, he's still pretty good at it.
"Isn't that just weird," he says of being fourth in the league in scoring at age 39. "The key for me is I don't get too caught up in it. I just go out and play, and that really seems to work. It's taken a while for me to get to this point, but I just want to play the best game I can play and then worry about the next game when it comes.
"That's something that's really helping me right now."
There was a time when Hull was an angry young man, when he expected his team or his coach or even the league to bend to his whims.
But after being let go by the Blues and the Stars, he said he has gained an understanding of how to adjust.
When first paired with a rookie two years ago in Detroit, he said it probably would have driven the younger Brett Hull crazy. But a little maturity and a little humility helped him adapt. "Plus, the kid was great," he said of a youngster named Pavel Datsyuk.
NHL's top scorer
Now, Datsyuk leads the NHL in scoring, Hull is fourth, and the future looks as distant as Hull wants to stretch it.
"Honestly, I think he has his eye on 800," said Stars center Mike Modano of the magical goal mark accomplished only by Wayne Gretzky (897) and Howe.
"His game is more reliant on his smarts than it is anything else, so I think he can do it."
Hull admits he wants to chase Howe but adds, "There has to be hockey first before I can even think about that."
A political moderate, Hull hopes the two sides of the NHL labor war can start to compromise.
"I just wish they would be honest with each other," he said. "The players know salaries have to come down, and the league knows they can do that without a salary cap. So find an answer; go out and find what's right for both sides."
Patience
Hull is about to get really rolling on the subject, but then he returns to the more patient person he has become.
"I guess I've come a long way in that department," he says. "If anything is going to help me keep going, that's it. Could I take a year off and still want to keep playing, still keep myself in shape?
"Yeah, I probably could," he answers. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see."
If this season is any indication, count on him coming back no matter what.