Early Life
Born February 26, 1957, in New York City, New York, Mullen grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan when it was controlled by the Gambino crime family. It was a rough neighborhood; Mullen later said that many of the people he grew up with fell into gangs and drug use, and several died before turning 21. He has three brothers, Ken, Tom Jr. and Brian, and a sister, Debbie.
The Mullen family lived less than a block from Madison Square Garden, where Joe's father Tom was a longtime employee on the ice and maintenance staffs. Joe and his brothers often hung around the arena with their father, taking old sticks to play with. He began playing roller hockey at the age of five, playing in a concrete schoolyard and using a sanded down roll of electrical tape as a puck. The boys' schoolyard games served as a partial inspiration for New York Rangers' general manager, Emile Francis, to create the Metropolitan Junior Hockey Association in 1966. Mullen did not learn to ice skate until he was ten years old, but at the age of 14 joined the Metropolitan association as one of the league's youngest players. Mullen played four seasons in the league between 1971 and 1975. He scored 71 goals in 1973–74, then 182 points in 40 games the following season. Mullen's 110 goals in 1974–75 was 52 more than his nearest competitor.
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