No longer hobbled by injury, Taylor Hall has found his legs — and turned back into an ‘offensive juggernaut’ for the Bruins
"Watching him come back from being out for a while and seeing how fast he accelerates, I was in awe tonight."
SUNRISE, Fla. — Taylor Hall’s tally on April 19 was not going to reverse the Bruins’ fortunes.
The 31-year-old winger’s quick shot from the slot was an unceremonious bookend to a miserable night on Causeway Street for Hall and his teammates. With just 1:10 left on the TD Garden clock, Hall’s goal cut his team’s deficit to just three in an eventual 6-3 drubbing against the Panthers.
But amid the misery of Boston’s lopsided loss, Jim Montgomery found progress in the form of Hall’s garbage-time goal — his first since Feb. 14.
“I know it’s a meaningless goal,” Montgomery said on Friday. “But it’s not a meaningless goal for him. When you’re an offensive player, and one goes in … He started to feel good. And he’s an offensive juggernaut in this league.”
Since that late goal on Wednesday night, Hall has lived up to Montgomery’s lofty designation.
Once hobbled by a lower-body ailment that put him on the shelf for six weeks this spring, Hall’s legs have regained their strength. His physical tools are once again matching his instinctive effort to put skaters on their heels in transition.
And that fleet-footed surge into the Panthers’ D zone served as the conduit behind a 10-goal salvo for the Bruins over two wins down in South Florida.
With a four-point showing (two goals, two assists) in Sunday’s 6-2 win in Game 4, Hall has now scored four goals and posted seven points over his last three games. He’s lit the lamp in all three contests — marking the first time he’s scored in three straight since Oct. 20-25.
“He doesn’t need a lot of space to make plays,” Charlie McAvoy said of Hall’s 0-to-60 acceleration. “And he’s not nervous to challenge you one-on-one. A lot of the times, he’ll go right around you if you’re not ready.”
Hall was undeterred by the sight of 6-foot, 208-pound Radko Gudas at center ice in the closing minutes of Sunday’s matchup.
The hard-hitting Panthers blueliner has the heft to topple even the sturdiest skaters. But before Gudas could even attempt to corral a skittering puck and deck Hall, the winger already slipped past him — depositing the biscuit past Sergei Bobrovsky with a nifty set of dekes to give Boston a 5-2 advantage.
Hall’s highlight-reel breakaway was an emphatic stamp on a dominant night for the former Hart Trophy winner.
But on a forward corps anchored by plenty of poised goal scorers, Hall’s true value is maximized when he’s using that speed to collapse defenses and orchestrate scoring chances off the rush.
But the skilled veteran is far more than just a V12 engine tasked with breaking through a stacked blue line. Much like Tyler Bertuzzi’s quick-thinking instincts among the fracas at the netfront, Hall’s processing ability with the puck on his stick in transition often carves up the sturdiest D-zone structures.
“He obviously reads plays very well,” DeBrusk said of Hall. He’ll come through the neutral zone and there’s a couple plays, even in the last couple games where he makes it high-stress.”
A poised feed into the low slot from Hall commenced the ricochet sequence that resulted in DeBrusk’s second goal of the evening at 8:05 in the third period.
But it was Hall’s initial set-up of DeBrusk’s first strike of the night that exemplified his knack for generating “high-stress” sequences.
Taking a feed from Hampus Lindholm in the neutral zone, Hall glided over the Panthers’ blue line on a power-play opportunity early in the second period.
Rather than take the puck along the boards and search for another seam pass, Hall carried it to the slot. The Panthers’ PK unit, needing to account for Hall’s aggressiveness, collapsed in on him to account for a potential high-danger look.
But with Hall shielding the puck against a wave of stick checks and a frantic Panthers grouping pushed out of position, DeBrusk skated in unopposed near the crease.
Hall’s tic-tac-toe sequence with Dmitry Orlov led to a power-play strike just seconds later.
“Watching him come back from being out for a while and seeing how fast he accelerates, I was in awe tonight,” Garnet Hathaway said of Hall’s playmaking capabilities. “There was a play where he’s coming up the left side in the third period and full speed — cut to the middle, protected it off one guy, protect from another guy and brought the puck in the zone.
“That’s hard to do. That’s hard hockey and that’s being able to battle through those stick checks, those bodies. And with that speed, with that control and making the right plays? That’s how we’re going to win games and it’s with him playing as well as he is.”
A lot has changed since Hall’s late goal in Game 2.
A series once stuck in a 1-1 deadlock has swung in favor of the Bruins, who can bounce Florida on Wednesday following their two-goal sweep at FLA Live Arena.
And Hall, whose season was once placed in doubt in wake of that late-season injury, has found his legs once again.
“I knew where I needed to improve and where I needed to help our team the most I can,” Hall said Friday. “Coming to the playoffs, that was my goal. … Wherever you’re slotted on the depth chart, there’s a goal in mind at the end of the road here and everyone’s bought in.”
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