The Taylor Hall Experiment Is At A Crossroads
Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
When the Chicago Blackhawks traded for Taylor Hall in the summer of 2023, it seemed like a perfect fit as a bridge from the rebuild to the future. Hall represented a talented winger who could bring along Connor Bedard at a reasonable cost. While he was never going to be the MVP-type player he was at his peak with the New Jersey Devils, Hall had caught on as a strong role player for the Boston Bruins. But he could help Bedard being The Guy without having to be The Guy himself.
It didn’t work out last season, but you can understand why — he injured his knee in a freak collision eight games into the season, calling off a comeback attempt after two games. It can happen to anyone. Unfortunately, it might simply seem as if Chicago and Hall were never truly meant to be. Hall’s off to a slow start, with just two goals and six points in 17 games, and Luke Richardson is clearly not happy about it.
Luke Richardson confirms some major Blackhawks lineup updates tonight against the Canucks:
Soderblom starts in goal.
Seth Jones is going on IR with a right foot injury.
And Taylor Hall is a healthy scratch in favor of Ilya Mikheyev.
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) November 16, 2024
Now, some fans are upset at Richardson for benching the former star, and the NHL trade buzzards are starting to circle around Hall, but let’s ignore that larger conversation for now. Hall is back in the lineup tonight, and these things can blow over easily, particularly when the player responds by playing well. The more interesting question is whether or not Hall has anything left to contribute.
To do that, we have to understand what Hall was at his peak, and he was a terror to behold. If he was simply an elite speedster who used his feet to generate elite shot volume and score 25-30 goals per season, that’d have been enough to make him a heck of a player. But he was that with incredible vision and touch to make difficult passes to set up high-danger chances.
10/30/18: NJD @ TBL: Kyle Palmieri, 9th of the season (132nd of career) Assisted by Taylor Hall and Will Butcher pic.twitter.com/uFhsq8lw1m
— Random Devils Goal A Day (@DevilsGoalADay) October 24, 2024
As he’s gotten older and the injuries piled up (he’s missed significant time in three of his six seasons since 2018-19), Hall wasn’t that type of volume shooter by the time he got to Boston. He could still skate, definitely still pass, and even score a pretty goal, but the possibility of him being able to score at any moment faded.
Now that he’s in Chicago, we’re asking ourselves: What’s left?
He’s an interesting case study, because there’s reason to believe that he will and won’t rebound. While Hall’s aging curve isn’t a neat, steady decline from his MVP season — he found some life as a Bruin — we can see a general downward trend to being a near-replacement-level player this season.
Courtesy of Evolving-Hockey
And yes, 33 years old is a bit early to experience such a drop-off of play, this would be far from the first time we’ve seen an offensive player decline hard into their early 30s. By the time players like Dany Heatley, Phil Kessel, and Thomas Vanek were Hall’s age, they were either offense-only specialists or on their way out of the NHL.
The problem for Hall is that he’s not done a particularly good job of driving either offense or defense. If Hall was a mere defensive liability or lost his ability to separate on offense but kept up his two-way play, there’d be a role for him on the Blackhawks. But this season, we’re seeing him beneath the 40th percentile in both offense and defense, and this has been a trend for Hall’s past three seasons… even including his final year in Boston.
Courtesy of Evolving-Hockey
So, what’s left to be optimistic about? For one, his knee injury hasn’t totally taken away his speed. While NHL EDGE’s stats had Hall in the top-10 percent of players in terms of top speed and most bursts of 20-plus mph skating as recently as 2021-22, Hall is still in the top quarter of the league when it comes to wheels. As long as he has above-average wheels, there’s still hope for Hall.
And while it hasn’t translated to offense yet, Hall does do a great job of both getting and setting up scoring chances. According to Corey Sznajder of All Three Zones, who’s tracking the Blackhawks in particular, the only Chicago player who is getting both more scoring chances and scoring chance assists is Bedard.
Courtesy of All Three Zones
It’s worth noting that there are plenty of star NHLers right in Hall’s neighborhood on this chart. We can see Jake Guentzel, Matt Boldy, and Jordan Kyrou surrounding Hall, and anything approaching those players’ performances would be welcome in Chicago. Now, those scoring chances have to turn into goals at some point, but 17 games isn’t a ton of time to turn around some bad luck. Maybe he just needs some time.
At this point, things can go either way with Hall. He could rebound and be the kind of bridge player the Blackhawks were investing in, or things could continue to sour as Hall fails to gain traction. And heck, there’s a third way: He might move somewhere else and thrive on a playoff contender once again. But if you’re looking for signs that things can turn around, they’re there, and we’ll start seeing if he can realize that potential tonight.
Up Next