Reports: Sabres acquire Anders Bjork, draft pick from Boston for Taylor Hall, Curtis Lazar

No one expected a marquee free agent to want anything to do with Buffalo. Hall, though, was coming off a season in which he totaled just 16 goals among 52 points in 65 games between New Jersey and Arizona.

With NHL teams facing a flat salary cap and significant revenue shortfalls caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Hall chose to gamble on himself by picking the Sabres, specifically Krueger.

The two worked together in Edmonton from 2010-13, first when Krueger was an assistant coach and capped by his one lockout-shortened season as the Oilers’ head coach. Hall had what he considers one of his best seasons in the NHL, finishing ninth in the league in points at only 21 years old in 2012-13.

During a conference call with Sabres management, including ownership, Hall heard a passionate sales pitch from Krueger, who boasted about the potential pairing with Eichel, a superstar center coming off a season in which he scored a career-high 36 goals.

“The team, in general, is much, much closer and better positioned to be successful than it might look like from the outside,” Krueger said then. “They’re missing the tipping point. And the big one. The big one would be you.”

Then came a season marred by calamity and chaos, beginning with the NHL’s decision to switch to play an intradivisional schedule that placed the Sabres in the East with perennial Cup contenders such as Boston, Washington and Pittsburgh.