Edmonton Oilers: 3 moves that doomed Peter Chiarelli

3. Trading Taylor Hall

As a 32-year-old, my generation’s “where were you when [insert thing] happened?” moment was September 11th, 2001. O.J. Simpson’s trial verdict also falls into this category. I vividly remember where I was when each event occurred. If Hockey Twitter has one of these moments, it’s this infamous Bob McKenzie tweet.

The Taylor Hall trade was a terrible one for the Edmonton Oilers. They effectively swapped a Ferrari for a Honda Odyssey at a time when they really needed the latter. The issue is the Oilers traded one of the best wings in the NHL and only got a fine defenseman in return. When you trade someone like Hall, your return needs to be greater than “fine”.

What’s baffling about this trade is people said “well, Hall never produced with Connor McDavid” as an excuse to justify the trade. Guess what? That’s a good thing! Hall didn’t need McDavid to put up impressive numbers. You need more than one line to win anything in today’s NHL. Chiarelli got handed two elite forwards who could drive their own line and gave one away for a guy who’s not even in the top 50 defensemen in the NHL.

The only reason this isn’t higher on the list is Chiarelli at least has a tangible asset on the NHL roster to show for it.