Quoting: Leafsfan98
This trade blows for EDM... They got nothing for Larsson while NJD got a ton for Hall
Seattle took Larsson in the 2021 expansion draft. So Edmonton got whatever their second best unprotected player was.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think the trade was overblown. Hall peaked with his MVP season, but then took a step back due to injuries and is no longer a superstar. The Devils made the playoffs once off of the back of Hall's MVP season, but otherwise did nothing with him. The Coyotes only got into the playoffs due to the expanded play-in format. Larsson was good in Edmonton for a year or two. You could argue that Hall was more of a difference maker for New Jersey than Larsson was for Edmonton, but I don't think he would have been as effective on an Edmonton team that was already stacked offensively.
It has been years, and we haven't heard of any concrete offers for Hall that make trading him for Larsson seem that bad. The other offer we have heard of is Hall for Ceci, which the Senators apparently missed because Bryan Murray could not get in touch with Eugene Melnyk to sign off on the extra spending that would have been required to bring Hall in. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem like GMs valued Hall as highly as fans did. They were clearly wrong in the short term since he was the best player in the league for a short window, but in the long term the trade did not negatively affect Edmonton.
The Hall trade ended up being very important for the Devils because it got them the pick that became Mercer - but at the end of the day they didn't trade for Mercer, they traded for a projected mid 1st and a bunch of B and C pieces. It is not like they got some gangbusters return for Hall. He was considered damaged goods by the time they moved on from him, and they got the typical 1st++ that most stars get at the trade deadline, only with a few extra smaller low value pieces
It seemed like a terrible deal at the time, but really it was fine.