Bruins Trade Taylor Hall, Nick Foligno To Blackhawks

UPDATE (3:27 p.m. ET): The Bruins have made the trade official, sending Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno to Chicago in exchange for Alec Regula and Ian Mitchell.

ORIGINAL STORY: Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno are apparently the first offseason dominoes to fall for the Bruins.

Boston has agreed to trade Hall and the rights to Foligno, an unrestricted free agent, to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for defensemen Alec Regula and Ian Mitchell, according to multiple reports. The Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli was the first to report the full deal Monday.

Neither Regula nor Mitchell is a heavily established NHL player (104 career games between the two), but they are intriguing pieces for the future on Boston’s blue line. Mitchell is a 2017 second-round pick. The 24-year-old played for Bruins coach Jim Montgomery at Denver, too. Regula is a big-bodied D-man, who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 208 pounds. He was a third-round pick of Detroit in 2018.

A big piece of this is the money, though. Parting with Hall opens up a good chunk of salary cap space for general manager Don Sweeney. Hall, according to CapFriendly.com, carries a cap hit of $6 million and was still owed $12.5 million in real money over the final two seasons of his four-year, $24 million deal he signed following the 2021-22 season. Hall has two years left on that deal.

Boston acquired the former No. 1 overall pick (along with Curtis Lazar) from the Buffalo Sabres at the 2021 trade deadline in exchange for Anders Bjork and a second-round pick. Hall was a useful player for the Bruins who could be deployed on multiple lines in addition to providing power-play minutes. He never quite regained the form that won him a Hart Trophy in New Jersey, but he was certainly valuable, especially in 2021-22 when he scored 20 goals to go with 41 assists in 81 games.

As for Foligno, his salary was coming off the books as he hits free agency next week, but this does give the Blackhawks a small window to potentially negotiate an extension. Chicago has interest in signing the veteran forward, according to TSN’s Darren Dreger.