HALL PREPARING TO ‘START NEW’
Former No. 1 pick motivated to prove Oilers traded away the wrong guy
Taylor Hall is no longer in the bitter stage of the breakup.
It’s been two long months since he and the rest of the hockey world were shocked with news that he had been traded from the Edmonton to New Jersey for defenceman Adam Larsson. At first, Hall was angry and a bit depressed to leave the only team for whom he had played. Now, he’s motivated to prove the Oilers moved the wrong player.
With about a month remaining until training camp, Hall made the three-hour drive from his home in Kingston, Ont., to Toronto to work out with Connor McDavid, Tyler Seguin and other NHLers at the BioSteel Camp. It’s a sacrifice, said Hall, who is staying in a hotel. But as anyone who’s gone through a breakup can attest, you can’t sit at home and mope around forever.
“You have to move on from your previous team as soon as possible,” Hall said in an interview following an off-ice workout. “I think I’ve done that. I haven’t been back to Edmonton or anything. I just want to get away from there and start new.”
As Hall spoke, you could tell he hasn’t quite moved on. This one still hurts and probably is going hurt for a while longer.
Edmonton, where he was the No. 1 pick in 2010, was his home for six years. After signing a seven-year contract in August 2012, he assumed it would be his home for years to come. At the very least, following so many years of finishing at the bottom of the standings, he hoped he would be around when the team finally contended for a playoff spot.
Instead, he’ll be watching from the outside as a member of the Devils — a team he’s unfamiliar with.
“I think that’s the part where you want to see it through,” said Hall. “You’ve been through some tough times and you think better times are around the corner and you want to be a part of that.
“To get traded was a tough pill to swallow. But like I said, hockey’s a business and I understand where they’re coming from and what they have to do.”
At the same time, Hall was shocked he was the one being moved. He knew the team has been lousy and needed to do something different. He knew significant changes were coming. But he still doesn’t get why it was him who was moved.
After all, Hall wasn’t exactly the problem. Oilers defenceman Oscar Klefbom might have recently told a Swedish newspaper that Hall was a fair-weather player who “never played his best games against tough teams,” but he still led Edmonton in scoring with 26 goals and 65 points last season and has averaged 0.86 points per game in his career.
It’s probably for those reasons that the Oilers essentially moved him. You have to give up something to get something. In order to acquire a 23-year-old defenceman who can log 22-plus minutes a game, you have to trade someone of similar value.
New Jersey wasn’t interested in Nail Yakupov, a bust as a No. 1 pick. Heck, not even Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Jordan Eberle would have got the deal done without having to give up more. And so Edmonton, who finally picked up a top-pairing defenceman in Larsson, and then signed Milan Lucic and drafted Jesse Puljujarvi with the fourth overall pick this summer, now seems to have the well-rounded type of team that Hall never got to enjoy.
“You’d be lying to say that you enjoy watching your former team do unbelievable without you,” said Hall. “That’s going to be a weird thing to see with them in the standings next year. That’s something I can’t prepare for.”
Also strange is imagining Hall in a Devils jersey. Even for Hall, the change hasn’t yet sunken in. That will come, he said, once the season starts. But he’s excited about the opportunity, even if he admits to being disappointed when the news first hit.
“They’re not a team I follow a lot, and I didn’t think I had a chance of being traded there, to be honest,” he said of the Devils. “But once you look at their roster, there’s more than a few guys who had career years on that team. So that coaching staff is doing something right. If not for some injuries, they were in the thick of things, and I’m looking forward to being in the thick of things, because it’s been a while since I’ve had that.”
Indeed, it will be interesting to see whether the Devils can qualify for the playoffs before the Oilers. But if they cannot, you can be sure that the attention won’t be as severe in New Jersey.
“I’m really excited for that part,” Hall said of going to a nonCanadian market. “I wouldn’t say Edmonton’s a fishbowl, but ... it’s certainly hard to hide from hockey. It’s really hard to get away from the game. I think I’m going to have more free time. It’s probably going to be nice not to have 30 reporters in the room after a game.”