Hall broke down the timeline of the blockbuster trade from his perspective Thursday. He claimed he's "definitely a better player than the amount I was playing" during his final weeks in Chicago.

RALEIGH, N.C. — In the weeks leading up to his trade to Carolina, Taylor Hall repeatedly said he wanted to stay in Chicago, that he wanted to be a part of what the Blackhawks were building, that he wanted to settle down in one city in the twilight of his peripatetic career.

The Chicago Blackhawks received their third-round pick back from the Hurricanes, didn't retain any of Hall's $6 million cap hit, but did retain $4.625 million of Mikko Rantanen's contract. According to Elliotte Friedman,

Connor Bedard scored from a seemingly impossible angle as the Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1 on Tuesday night, and the star forward said after the victory that "I've tried that shot a million times and I finally put one in.

Connor Bedard isn’t exactly scouring the Internet for clips of his future teammates. He’s not sifting through NCAA hockey stats and monitoring the Ontario Hockey League leaders or catching grainy streams of Western Hockey League games.