After just 10 games, Taylor Hall’s first Blackhawks season is over.
Hall will undergo surgery on the ACL in his right knee and will miss the remainder of the year, the Hawks announced Thursday.
The 32-year-old forward suffered the knee injury Nov. 9 at the Lightning and missed the next two games. He then returned for the Hawks’ back-to-back this past weekend against the Predators and Sabres, playing around 17 minutes in both games but looking sluggish, before missing Wednesday’s blowout loss to the Blue Jackets while undergoing testing.
“He’s very disappointed,” coach Luke Richardson said. “[It] came from an accumulation of a bunch of little injuries in the game and even in practice the other day, and it just became [so] unstable that they have to fix that now.”
Hall’s absence leaves a massive hole in the Hawks’ already depth-lacking forward corps. Hall had been acquired from the Bruins over the summer to be star rookie Connor Bedard’s right-hand man and playmaking companion.
Although Philipp Kurashev, Lukas Reichel and Nick Foligno have each emerged as decent complementary options for Bedard, the Hawks still rank second-to-last in the NHL in goals per game. Getting only four points out of Hall all season won’t help in that regard.
Andreas Athanasiou was also placed on retroactive injured reserve Thursday with a groin injury, and Cole Guttman and Joey Anderson were called up from AHL Rockford. Corey Perry remains suspiciously absent from the team, as well.
