The biggest trade of the 2024-25 NHL season came well before the March 7 deadline when the Colorado Avalanche, Carolina Hurricanes, and Chicago Blackhawks linked up for an all-time blockbuster.
The Avs sent star forward Mikko Rantanen to the Canes for Martin Necas, Jack Drury, and two draft picks. The Hawks also got involved by taking on some of Rantanen’s salary cap hit and dumping Taylor Hall in exchange for their own previously traded third-round pick.
With only nine goals and 24 points and a minus-15 rating over 46 games for the Hawks this season, Hall was much less of a rental asset than previously expected. General manager Kyle Davidson said after the trade that they weren’t interested in waiting around to get a better return for a player they knew they were going to move.
The Hurricanes are hosting the Hawks in Carolina on Thursday and Hall told Scott Powers of The Athletic that he was happy to get out of Chicago and move to a competitive team.
“My playing time in Chicago, for whatever reason, was not what I would have liked it to be,” Hall said. “So I was happy to be traded, and I was happy to come to a really good team that has a culture in place and a structure that I feel fits well with me.”
Hall’s time in Chicago didn’t go as planned, which has sort of been the overarching story of his career since being selected with the first-overall pick in the 2010 draft by the Edmonton Oilers. He’s now on his seventh NHL team and hasn’t been deeper than the second round of the playoffs.
The two-time Memorial Cup MVP was the face of Edmonton’s Oil Change in the early part of the decade. He was a bright spot on some very bad Oilers teams but Hall wound up getting jettisoned after the team found a new franchise player. Just one after after winning the Connor McDavid draft lottery, Hall was moved to the New Jersey Devils for Adam Larsson.
The best season of Hall’s career came with New Jersey in 2017-18 when he scored 93 points and edged out Nathan MacKinnon for the Hart Trophy. It was also the only one of Hall’s four seasons in New Jersey in which the Devils made the playoffs and they fell in the first round before he was eventually traded to Arizona.
When his contract expired, Hall wasn’t able to find a long-term deal in free agency, so he took a one-year, show-me pact with the Buffalo Sabres. Hall played just 37 games for a terrible Sabres team and was traded to the Boston Bruins, who re-signed him to a four-year, $24 million contract in the summer.
Hall appeared to have finally found a home in Boston, ironically with the team who selected right behind the Oilers at second overall at the 2010 draft. He scored 61 points in his first full season with the Bruins in 2021-22 and declined to 36 points the following year.
The Bruins won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2022-23 with a record-setting 65-12-5 campaign but they were shocked in the first round of the playoffs by the eighth-seeded Florida Panthers. In the off-season, Boston moved Hall and Nick Foligno to Chicago in a cost-cutting move.
Now in his 15th season in the NHL, Hall has 275 goals and 722 points over 880 games played along with 29 points through 39 playoff games. Injuries have certainly taken a toll over the years and this year with Carolina might be the 33-year-old’s best opportunity to finally go on a deep playoff run.
