Looking for a clean slate, a humbled Taylor Hall seems ready to rewrite past narratives in Boston

Taylor Hall didn't mince words on Monday when it came to recapping his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad tenure with the Buffalo Sabres.

"It went pretty badly, obviously," Hall said via Zoom in his first conference call as a Boston Bruin. "We started off, our first 10 games (at) .500. We had the COVID outbreak and we couldn’t get our footing after that. For myself, obviously it wasn’t the season I would’ve like to have had, not even close. These last few days, you do some soul-searching and look back on what you could do better, and look forward to the future."

That future, for at least the next few months, is in Boston — a club primed to punch Hall's ticket to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for just the third time in his 11-year NHL career, but whose viability as a true Cup contender might hinge on whether or not Hall can break through the scoring malaise that tanked his value during his four months in Buffalo.

While Hall's resume speaks for itself as a former No. 1 overall pick and 2018 Hart Trophy winner, the winger was candid when it came to assessing what has largely been a lost season so far in 2021 — with the 29-year-old forward only tallying two goals through 37 games. Of course, common sense would seem to signal that Hall is due to regress back to the mean when it comes to his historically low shooting percentage, while his transition talents and knack for generating high-danger passes should give Boston a major lift in the top six,  but Hall is looking to keep his performance this year in perspective, noting that he has to build his game back up if he wants to positively impact this B's roster.

"Unfortunately, right now, I'm not the most confident hockey player," Hall said. "Throughout this year, there have been a lot of struggles and obviously, goal scoring has been the biggest one. I've got to find a little bit of that part of my game back. I don't think it's completely lost or anything like that. But I'm not expecting to come and score 93 points in Boston again. I want to be a part of a winning team and whatever I have to do to do that, that's what I'm here to do. I still believe in myself a lot as a hockey player. In saying that, I still believe I have a lot of athleticism and a lot of speed and I hope I can add to the team with those trades."

For Hall, Boston has always stood as an appealing option, noting that his no-movement clause made it easier to facilitate a deal that would send him to the Original Six franchise — which could be what the return for Hall was as minimal as it was for the Sabres if the forward wasn't willing to just get dealt anywhere.

“Once I knew there was a possibility I’d be traded, Boston was basically number one on the list of teams that I wanted to go to," Hall said. "Kevyn Adams, the (Sabres) GM, was just fantastic in the way that he treated me and the way that he went about the situation, knowing that I wanted to play for the chance to win the Stanley Cup. He worked it out to a team that I really wanted to go to, and I’ll always be thankful to him for that."

While Hall has regularly been regarded as the top dog on most of the teams he's been a part of — be it on a barren Oilers team or a young Devils club — the veteran did note that part of the appeal with Boston is joining a locker room already anchored by franchise cornerstones like Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, offering a much more stable dynamic than what Hall has regularly been used to during his tumultuous tenure with four different clubs.

Though Hall's detractors have also harped on the lack of team success for clubs headlined by the winger, a clean slate in Boston as more of a complementary piece alongside names like Bergeron, Marchand and Pastrnak might be just what he needs to get back on track.

"That was one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to play in Boston," Hall said. "That's why I'm so happy that I'm traded here. I've been the focal point on a lot of teams in my career. I never made myself the focal point. That's just the situations that I was in. ... going to Boston, there are so many great players on that team - Hall of Famers - guys that have had just amazing careers, careers that if I had anything like that at the end of my career, I'd be super happy with.