Montreal Canadiens Fortunate They Didn’t Trade For Taylor Hall

The Montreal Canadiens should have missed the playoffs by a wide margin. They are fortunate they didn’t make a panic trade early in the season.

The Montreal Canadiens got off to a great start to the 2019-20 season. They had a few wild comebacks to win games late and held on for dear life in a few nail biters, but had defeated some real tough competition in the first six weeks of the season.

As of November 15th, when they handily defeated the Washington Capitals, the Habs were 11-5-3 and sitting 6th in the NHL standings. They were scoring goals in bunches, and though they could have stood to be a little better defensively, they were finding ways to win games.

It was around this time of the season that the rumour mill was starting to really churn. The Canadiens were one of the few teams playing well early on that had some cap space they could use. This gave them an advantage, because they could make trades earlier than most others teams and afford to pay the entire salary of the player they were acquiring. Many other teams would have to wait until the last minute before they could add a big contract.

This led to heavy speculation that the Canadiens could be in the market for Taylor Hall. The New Jersey Devils left winger and 2018 Hart Trophy winner was on the market as a pending unrestricted free agent on a team that was not looking good at all early in the season. With the Devils apparently looking to make an early trade, and the Habs able to add big salary early in the season, the rumours began.

It would have made a lot of sense for the Habs at the time. Yes, Hall is a left winger and that isn’t exactly their worst position, but both Jonathan Drouin and Paul Byron were injured on November 15, and both were going to miss significant time. That’s two of the team’s three best left wingers. So, suddenly the Habs biggest weakness was at left wing.

With those two wingers out of the lineup, the Habs immediately fell into an abyss. They lost their next eight games. The pressure was mounting on Marc Bergevin to do something as the team was in a terrible tailspin.

He didn’t. Though he could have sent a huge package to the Devils for Hall, he chose to stand pat. By the time Hall was finally traded, to the Arizona Coyotes for a first round pick, conditional third round pick, prospects Kevin Bahl, Nate Schnarr and Nick Merkley, the Habs had (temporarily) righted the ship.

They were sitting just a couple points outside the playoff picture on December 16 when Hall was dealt. It would have been easy for Bergevin to point to how well the team was playing when healthy early in the year and offer up the Habs first round pick and a solid defensive prospect like Cale Fleury or Josh Brook as well as a few other middling prospects for Taylor Hall.

Fortunately, Bergevin didn’t make any hasty decision. Instead, he waited until players who could help the team became available at a low cost. He brought in Marco Scandella from the Buffalo Sabres for a 4th round pick. He signed Ilya Kovalchuk as a free agent after his contract with the Los Angeles Kings was terminated.

Did they have quite the same impact Taylor Hall would have? Probably not. But with the Habs ten points outside the playoffs when the league went on hiatus in March, how much closer would they have been with Hall in the lineup? Would they have been eight points out? Five? Would they have been just close enough at the deadline to not add 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th round picks for veteran players on expiring contracts?

It’s impossible to say, but Hall hasn’t been able to lift the fortunes of the Arizona Coyotes since they gave up a haul of future assets for him. In fact, the Coyotes have gone in the complete wrong direction since Hall arrived. The Coyotes were tied for 6th in league standings with 42 points when they acquired the former Hart Trophy winner.

Since then they were the 27th best team in hockey with 32 points in 35 games. So, there are no guarantees the Habs would be in a much better position if Hall was on the team since December.

Even if the Habs were in a better position in the standings, they would still be heading into a Best-of-5 play-in series to make the playoffs. Imagine if they traded their first round pick and had to take part in a play-in series to determine if that would be the 10th overall pick or the 20th.

Losing the five game series would be devastating, as it would mean no playoffs and no top ten pick to soothe the burn. Hall has played fine with the Coyotes, scoring 27 points in 35 games, but he hasn’t been able to translate that into much team success.

The Arizona Coyotes are in a tough spot right now. They have to play the Nashville Predators in a play-in series. If they lose, the have to surrender the 10th overall pick to the New Jersey Devils as part of the Taylor Hall trade. They could also lose Hall to free agency after the playoffs.

That’s not an ideal scenario. Thankfully, Bergevin was patient and didn’t make a bad situation even worse.