Taylor Hall is staying in Boston! Initially reported by TSN’s Darren Dreger Hall and the Bruins are finalizing a 4-year $24 million deal where Hall will have a full no-trade clause. This is huge for the Bruins to lock in the former #1 overall pick for 4 more years especially when you consider he is still only 29 years old. Sure, the Buffalo experiment did not pan out (2 goals in 37 games) but that is Buffalo we are talking about. Their head coach was fired, Eichel was missing time, and the team was garbage and at one point had an 18-game winless streak. He had to get out of there and when he got his chance in Boston, he immediately fit right in on the 2nd line with Krejci, the two of them playing together was beautiful to watch.
Hall is a 2-time all-star and, as I mentioned already, he won the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player. A lot of people were quick to claim Hall was in decline after his MVP season in New Jersey but that was a bad team he carried to the playoffs. He played on bad teams in Edmonton. He got traded to Arizona and they were bad. He has never been surrounded by players and leadership like he is in Boston. Hall noticed that right away. He was very quick to mention how he wanted to re-sign with Boston and play here for a while and Taylor Hall was a man of his word. Remember back in 2010 during the Taylor/Tyler draft debate? Well, we were #2 and we got Tyler and all he did was win us (The Bruins) a Stanley Cup with a great playoff run. It sucked when he got caught “allegedly” banging a teammates wife and they shipped him out to Dallas. Seguin is a star in the league and would have been fun to watch for a long time in Boston. Well now it’s time to see the #1 pick of that same draft class step in and become a face of this team and giving the Bruins 2 dominant lines up front.
In the 16 games leading to the playoffs Hall had 14 points (8g,6a) and in the playoffs he had 2 goals and an assist against the Capitals and 1 and 1 against the Islanders.
This locks in 5 out of the 6 top forwards for the Bruins so far with the Perfection line (Marchand, Bergeron, Pastarnak) all coming back and all we are waiting on now is for David Krejci to take the time he needs, talk it over with the family and decide next year is the year to win his 2nd Stanley Cup and re-sign with the Bruins and go get after it with Hall.