Why has Taylor Hall failed to find a home?

[pigpen65]

It's not a very interesting question concerning his time in Buffalo, he scored 2 goals.

 

[biturbo19]

Hall is not a goal scoring winger. He’s a playmaker. That’s his forte. His only elite goal scoring season was his Hart season and that was a one off. He’s a speedy playmaker who likes to have the puck in transition. That’s the biggest thing. He struggles to play with stars because he’s the one who likes the puck in transition. He seemed to gell with Pastrnak but they had Coyle as a center. The only high end center ive seen him really click with is Draisaitl when he was a rookie. If he was a goal scorer he would be way more valuable. He’s never been a goal scorer.

I guess that's somewhat fair. Calling him a goal-scorer kind of mischaracterizes him as an elite finisher, when he really hasn't been. But he plays that individualistic puckhog sort of game that makes him far from a playmaker either.

Whatever you label it, that whole stylistic thing is definitely a big challenge with him that has contributed to bouncing around like he has. You're probably right, in that if he was an elite finisher as a goal-scorer, teams wouldn't mind so much. But what he actually is, just makes him an awkward clashing misfit with actually really skilled centers in particular. He doesn't naturally jive with a true playmaker because he ends up fighting them to carry the puck on his stick, but is too north-south and doesn't have the real patience or creativity as a passer to mesh very well with a pure sniper as a classic setup man either.

It's rare to see a good player who struggles so much to find chemistry with other good players, but Hall has been that for the most part. It's tough because he kind of has to be the "best player on his line"...but he's also not necessarily good enough to carry a good line. So you end up with a bit of an awkward "helicopter line", but from the wing.

 

[valet]

He's got the "intangibles" and stigma of "a loser".

i think this is really the main point. he just seems like an apathetic sort of personality. maybe he is truly hungry to win deep down, but the person that he projects outwards is a total loser that has resigned himself to never doing anything truly important. at some point he made up his mind that this was just his fate.... now there's no going back

 

[biturbo19]

i think this is really the main point. he just seems like an apathetic sort of personality. maybe he is truly hungry to win deep down, but the person that he projects outwards is a total loser that has resigned himself to never doing anything truly important. at some point he made up his mind that this was just his fate.... now there's no going back

It's that thing like JT Miller, where he seems to get spazzed out and throw a tantrum or get mopey about the weirdest irrelevant stuff. Then completely flat when it comes to the actual team stuff.

Like you said...who knows what's really going on in there. But it reads externally like "bozo".

 

[valet]

It's that thing like JT Miller, where he seems to get spazzed out and throw a tantrum or get mopey about the weirdest irrelevant stuff. Then completely flat when it comes to the actual team stuff.

Like you said...who knows what's really going on in there. But it reads externally like "bozo".

they could also just not be neurotypical. a lot of discussion has opened up recently about this in professional sports. Miller specifically, he's a great example. really hard to explain a lot of his behavior unless you want to shift him into one of those categories