The Taylor Hall situation ended on a whimper. He had been in trade rumors for weeks leading up to finally being shipped off to the Arizona Coyotes. It wasn’t fun to see him go, but in hindsight, it was probably the best move for both him and the Devils. He was a great player here and don’t let anyone tell you differently. His .99 points per game are the most for any Devils player in the history of the franchise. He was also the first player to ever win the Hart Trophy as a member of this team.
As for 2019-20, he didn’t have the greatest year all around. He was still so clearly the Devils best player, however, but he just needed to provide more for this team to take the next step and he didn’t. A lot of it wasn’t his fault though because there wasn’t enough around him to be successful as a team anyway.
In 30 games for New Jersey, he had six goals and 19 assists for 25 points. He was slightly off his point-per-game pace, but you never know how that would have fared if he stuck around. His 52 points that he had in all of his games combined between New Jersey and Arizona would have led the Devils in scoring by seven points. It wasn’t his best year by any means, but he certainly was still a good player.
Taylor Hall gets a B- because he wasn’t good enough this year. We know what he is capable of and maybe if he was having that type of season, he would have made the Devils more hesitant to trade him to the Coyotes. He doesn’t deserve much lower than that, however, because there weren’t many players worse than him. He was still their best player.