It doesn’t matter anymore

Whenever the Oilers face the @New Jersey Devils, one player on the other team always comes into focus. It’s @Taylor Hall, the guy once deemed saviour of the franchise who was ultimately dealt away in the infamous The Trade Is One For One? deal.

But last night felt different. In the three previous seasons Hall has spent with the Devils, particularly his MVP-winning 2017-18 season, many fans felt a level of frustration seeing him thrive on a different team. This year, with the Oilers rolling with a 4-0 record to start the season and a brand new wave of optimism manifested from veteran general manager Ken Holland, that frustration has quieted. It doesn’t matter anymore.

The Hall trade is certainly one of the most divisive topics of discussion in Oilers’ history. On one hand, you have fans who were livid at Peter Chiarelli for trading away an elite-calibre forward away for a good-not-great defenceman. On the other hand, you have those who will argue that the Oilers needed to make the deal, either because @Adam Larsson provided something the team didn’t have or because Hall didn’t mesh in the dressing room.

If you talk to pretty much any fan of this team, they’ll feel strongly about the trade one way or another. But there was also an urge to simply move on and let it go. Why continually get upset about something that already happened? Why obsess over what could have been?

The frustration that permeated even years after the trade stemmed from a lack of faith over the job that Peter Chiarelli was doing as the team’s general manager. The Hall for Larsson deal was Chiarelli’s banner move. It defined his career in Edmonton. He made many other decisions — some good, like getting @Connor McDavid and @Leon Draisaitl locked in long-term, and some bad, like trading two draft picks for Griffin Reinhart and signing @Milan Lucic to a massive contract — but the Hall trade is the one that defines his time here.

Chiarelli inherited a group that a somewhat aimless front office stumbled upon through tanking. From a fan’s perspective, Hall was the central reward of all of our years of frustration. From the post-Cup run collapse, into the years of middling, and into the Decade of Darkness, Hall and his back-to-back Memorial Cup MVPs were seen as the Oilers’ saviour. Throughout the first half of the 2010s, he was among the only things that made the team worth paying attention to.

Shortly after a year of arriving, Chiarelli moved the former saviour to plug a hole elsewhere on the team. Since there was a new saviour in town, Hall got pushed out. We never really got an opportunity to see what Taylor Hall and Connor McDavid could have done together. The two spent only 76 minutes on the ice together at even strength that season.

The first season after the trade, it seemed fine. The Oilers made the playoffs and Hall struggled through injuries. The season after that, though, the Oilers sputtered and fell back into mediocrity while Hall carried the Devils into the playoffs with an MVP-winning season. The post that Jonathan Willis wrote shortly after the trade that dealing Hall could cost the Oilers a Stanley Cup seemed more true than ever.

Chiarelli managed to take a situation that seemed so idiot-proof and completely completely mess it up. Beyond getting the golden ticket in Connor McDavid, he inherited a young core of Hall, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Oscar Klefbom, Darnell Nurse, and Leon Draisaitl. Rather than becoming a consistent Stanley Cup contender, the Oilers found themselves, yet again, toiling in mediocrity with a poorly-constructed roster with salary cap issues.

This is where the majority of the Hall trade frustration came from. Fans felt they were robbed by this general manager of what could have been an incredible thing. You have to suffer through a lot of miserable seasons and have luck on your side to have that kind of young talent on your roster, and Chiarelli wildly mismanaged it.

The endless aggravation over the Hall trade was a projection of anger from the mismanagement of an entire era. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Chiarelli is gone. The team is headed in a much better direction. Ken Holland is providing that veteran stability the organization so badly needs. Prospects are being brought along slowly, legitimate NHL depth is being added to the roster, and there isn’t the same anxiety about good players or prospects or draft picks being moved in panic deals.

I won’t speak for everyone, but it feels nice to let go. I mean, everyone is still going to have an opinion about this trade. Some will say it was fine, some will say it was awful, some till say it had to happen, some will say you could have got a better return, some will still fantasize about what a Hall-McDavid one-two punch would look like.

But rather than sitting here and thinking oh man, this guy dealt Taylor Hall, what’s he going to do next and seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, there’s hope again. And with that hope, there’s not as much reason to fret about the past.

If you’ve ever been to one of our events, you’ll already know that your ticket to the event will not only guarantee you memories that last a lifetime, a swag bag that will help power to your through life, but it also helps us raise money for a local charity all at the same time. This time around, we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible so that we can pack the Brewhouse and kick off the season with as many Nation citizens as we get in the building. And since the party starts so early on a Saturday, the Brewhouse is able to offer an all-ages event, meaning this is the perfect event to bring your kids to.

Where: The Canadian Brewhouse – Lewis Estates (1320 Webber Greens Dr NW)
When: Saturday, October 12th, with doors opening at 10 AM and the hockey game starting at 11 AM
How much: Tickets are $15 each with net proceeds going directly to the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation.
The bag: Exclusive Season Opener Party tee, Brewhouse GC, Oodle Noodle GC, stickers, and a ticket to enter all of the draws and raffles
How: Tickets are available here.