5 Reasons New Jersey Devils Should Sign Taylor Hall
By Nick Villano
Taylor Hall Is A Great Player
While Taylor Hall may not be the player we thought he’d become when the star won the Hart Trophy, he’s still one of the best players at his position. The preseason comparisons to Artemi Panarin will make us look infinitely bad after how their seasons ended up, but we still see Hall being a top ten left winger, and probably top five in the league.
This season, Hall has 16 goals and 36 assists in 65 games. It’s not a very impressive output. A lot of it has to do with just a lot of bad luck during his time with the Devils. He shot a paltry 5.5%, leading to only six goals in 30 games, despite taking more than three shots per game. He was getting opportunities, but he’d either get robbed by the goalie, or something strange would happen to get a goal taken away.
He was on the ice for 290 high-danger chances this season, but those have only turned into 38 goals. That’s an insanely low number. In his MVP year, he was on the ice for 353 high-danger chances, and 66 became goals. Even in the season before that, he was on the ice for 285 chances which turned into 43 goals.
Honestly, we still see glimpses of the man who carried an entire team to 10 wins in 13 games in March and April 2018 to stave off the Panthers for the final playoff spot. It’s not easy to get players as good as Taylor Hall, and they are almost never available in free agency.