The 2023-24 Blackhawks were never going to be in contention, but it could be argued that one of the biggest reasons last season went off the rails so quickly for Chicago was Taylor Hall’s battle with injuries. In just his eighth game of the year, Hall injured his right knee in a collision with Lightning forward Mikey Eyssimont. After playing in back-to-back games a week later, Hall was shut down for the rest of the year and underwent surgery. He finished with two goals and two assists in ten games played.
This year, Hall has thankfully looked fully back to normal. Head coach Luke Richardson specifically said he was pleased with him in practice, and that the injured knee has responded very well throughout training camp.
However, with Hall’s recent track record and age, there’s still cause for concern. There won’t be as much pressure on Hall to score with this year’s vastly improved lineup, but Chicago still needs him in the lineup throughout the season and can’t afford a repeat of last year, especially with him being a UFA next summer. The Blackhawks will be implementing a unique plan to keep Hall from getting injured again.
On one hand, the news means the Blackhawks will be without Hall for some games again this year, which obviously isn’t great considering his role on the offensive end. However, missing a few practices or games here and there is far better than the alternative, like we saw last season. Hopefully, this plan is mostly implemented for practice purposes rather than him missing too many games. Either way, it’s important to not panic when we see him miss a practice for maintenance, or be a healthy scratch for half of a back-to-back pair of games.
If this plan works and Hall is able to log 70-plus games this season, watch out. His new linemates, likely Philipp Kurashev and Ilya Mikheyev, don’t have quite the same attacking prowess as the top line, but a healthy Taylor Hall is formidable and should produce plenty of scoring.
