Taylor Hall, who has missed the Bruins’ last 16 games with a lower-body injury, has been skating with the team for a week now, donning a red no-contact jersey in practices and morning skates. He is clearly making progress, but there has still been no official timetable for his return to game action.
On Tuesday night, Darren Dreger made some waves when he suggested during TSN’s “Insider Trading” segment that Hall is ready to play already, but that his return is being delayed by salary cap issues.
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“Sources say that he [Hall] feels that he is ready. The problem is the Bruins don’t have the cap space to activate Taylor Hall,” Dreger said. “Now, the NHL playoffs are less than three weeks away, so it’s going to be interesting to see how the Bruins manage this situation, or, if like the Tampa Bay Lightning a few years ago, they try to stretch it out until the start of the postseason. But it’s something that I’m sure other clubs are paying attention to as well.”
What Dreger is referencing is the 2020-21 Lightning, who held an injured Nikita Kucherov out for the entire regular season, stashing him on long-term injured reserve to take his cap hit off the books before activating their superstar for Game 1 of the playoffs, when there are no cap restrictions.
While the Lightning technically didn’t do anything that violated the league’s collective bargaining agreement, there were widespread accusations of cap circumvention given the convenient timing of Kucherov’s return.
Dreger seems to be suggesting that there is at least some belief that the Bruins may now be doing the same with Hall. For what it’s worth, the NHL has not changed anything regarding LTIR in the two years since the Kucherov saga.
After the Bruins’ 2-1 loss to the Nashville Predators on Tuesday, coach Jim Montgomery was asked about Dreger’s report, and denied that Hall is “ready” to return.
“The only thing I can say is that I know that he is not cleared. That’s what I know. So that report to me is false,” Montgomery said.
It’s worth pointing out that even if Dreger’s report about Hall feeling “that he is ready” is true, players thinking they’re ready and medical staffs clearing them to play are often two different things.
Putting Hall on LTIR is what allowed the Bruins to have the cap space to go out and acquire Tyler Bertuzzi just before the trade deadline. Hall and Nick Foligno had both just suffered injuries that week, and there was no timetable for either’s return at the time.
What’s odd about Dreger’s report is that he makes no mention of the Bruins moving either Foligno or Derek Forbort (who is also dealing with a lower-body injury) to LTIR in order to activate Hall. Neither are currently on LTIR, but putting either on it would give Boston enough cap space to move Hall off it.
Foligno joined Hall in a no-contact jersey at Tuesday’s morning skate, marking the first time he’s skated with the full team since getting injured on Feb. 28. Forbort, who was injured blocking a shot on March 16, has yet to be spotted on the ice at Warrior Ice Arena and is seemingly the furthest from returning. Montgomery previously said Forbort was not expected to return until the postseason.
Activating Hall before the end of the regular season could be beneficial for the Bruins, especially if they’re planning to test a third line of Hall, Bertuzzi and Charlie Coyle. Getting those three regular-season repetitions together would be preferable to trying it for the first time in the playoffs.
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