Why the Blackhawks didn’t get more for Taylor Hall

As the third wheel in Friday’s blockbuster deal involving the Colorado Avalanche, Carolina Hurricanes, and superstar forward Mikko Rantanen, the Chicago Blackhawks played kingmaker, agreeing to take on half of Rantanen’s salary cap hit in exchange for a third-round draft choice. The Blackhawks also traded away left winger Taylor Hall as part of the deal.

On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discussed whether the Blackhawks received enough in return or if the club should have held out for a more bountiful reward.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Taylor Hall is on the move. He is going to Carolina, so his list of career teams gets even longer. But there was a bit of an eyebrow raise to the Blackhawks here. I almost sat and went, ‘Okay, if it was a third-round pick for Taylor Hall, that would have made sense. A third-round pick to keep the Rantanen money, that would have made sense.’ To do both and only get a third, I feel underwhelmed, from a Blackhawks’ perspective.

Frank Seravalli: I get it, and it’s fair to ask the question of, ‘Why didn’t you get two assets?’ That said, Kyle Davidson addressed that this morning in his media availability in Chicago. He said Taylor Hall was playing in a fourth-line role recently. Let’s just game it out for a second because we always think greedy, best-case scenario. What happens if it’s worst-case scenario? What happens if you hang on to Taylor Hall, you don’t do this trade, you don’t get Carolina to take on all his contract, which is a pretty big one at $6 million, for his production, and you get a fourth rounder? And then it’s a fourth rounder from a contending team, so it’s almost a fifth. In this case scenario, they did it in a different way. They probably could have pushed and squeezed for two assets, but they got essentially what was the best third-round pick you could get, in getting their own back. I just think, when you look at it from that point of view, it’s much better to have one good asset than two crappy ones, and I think that’s part of their thought process.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here: