When the Wolf Pack was born in the fall of 1997, its most solid connection to the state of Connecticut was Hamden native Todd Hall.A product of Boston College and the University of New Hampshire, Hall had begun his professional playing career the season before in Binghamton with the Rangers, the team that would move to Hartford and become the Wolf Pack. Prior to going to college, he had been drafted by the Hartford Whalers, in the third round in 1991. Hall spent four excellent seasons with the Pack, and was a major contributor to the Calder Cup championship of 1999-2000. He retired one game into the 2001-02 season, and still ranks third all-time in Wolf Pack history in games-played (299), tied for fifth in assists (79) and eighth in points (116). Since ending his playing career, Hall has remained in his home state. He now makes his living in landscape design, with his brother-in-law and former Hamden High School teammate, Scott Jason. “We do mainly residential,” Hall says. “Basically, we'll go to a house, look at the area, take pictures, and then Scott, who graduated from UConn with a Landscape Architecture degree, does a design, with planting, walkways, patios, walls, whatever the people want. And then we'll go in and go over the design, they can either do everything in one shot or they can break it down into seasons, like we'll do this for fall, this next spring, and then we'll go in there and install whatever it is we agree upon. “We're the owners, estimators, designers, installers, clean-up guys, everything.” When asked how he happened to get into this line of business, the now-33-year-old Hall responds: “What happened was, Scott was working at a nursery for years, even through college and after college for a couple of years, and he was getting the itch to go on his own. And he kind of did it part-time while I was still playing hockey, and he needed someone to kind of do some record-keeping, nothing major, so I did that while I was playing, like in the summertime and stuff. And then the summer before I stopped playing, he did it like three times a week, so I would help him those three days a week. And it just kind of evolved from there, and then when I stopped and he left full-time from his other job, at the nursery, we just kind of joined forces.” And how does he enjoy it? “You know what it is? I've never considered myself a craftsman, but I've always enjoyed, like, woodworking, things like that, and maybe building a couple of things,” Hall says. “Not even necessarily creativity, just putting things together and having a final product, is what I've always enjoyed doing. So this is kind of in that field, in that you basically give us not necessarily a blank slate, but you have, like, overgrown shrubs in front of your house. We pretty much clean it out, redesign it and replant it, and when you're done with the plants, the mulch, everything, it's that end product that I like. And I've always enjoyed that type of work. “In terms of being passionate about it, certainly it's part of what my passions are.” In addition to his “day job” (his and Scott's company is called “Nature's Hand”), Hall has continued to do some work in the hockey field. He is going into his sixth season as the assistant coach at his high school alma mater, Hamden High. “I'm going to be honest with you, I enjoy it (coaching) a lot more than I ever thought I would,” Hall says. “I didn't think I wasn't going to enjoy it for any particular reason, but the funny thing is, I've always pictured myself as a teacher, and I kind of separated that from being a coach. But I'm teaching while I coach, so that teaching aspect is really a big part of coaching, for me anyway. But the adjustment of going from a player to a coach, I'm not dealing with 20 through 35-year-olds. I'm dealing with high-school adolescents that have their own issues, different from what I had been used to, and had kind of forgotten about, when I was there with my buddies. So it's just kind of a different thing altogether.” Being that he spent so much of his life as a player in the pro game, one wonders whether Hall harbors any thoughts of coaching at that level. “I wouldn't strive for that necessarily,” he says of that notion. “I would think if something came up kind of out of the blue I would certainly consider it. At the same time, if you broke it down per hour of work during the hockey season and that one check you get at the end of the year (for coaching high school), you basically lost money. So I don't do it for the money, but at the same time, I've got to think about a family, supporting a family, and I do work. But it's seasonal work, though. If it ever came down to it where something came up and it was one of those offers you couldn't refuse and it made a whole lot of sense, I would certainly consider it, but I'm kind of happy where I am.” 
Hall's most prominent memories of being with the Wolf Pack? Not surprisingly, the Calder Cup year tops the list. “Personally, it was my best season, across the board,” he says, “in terms of playing time, points, success, and obviously, and John Paddock always said this, when you're winning, and he had actually had a thing, and I share this with my buddies all the time, we actually skated harder and more often when we were winning that year, because John's philosophy was that players take that better when you're winning. They're in a better mood, they don't mind skating so much when you're winning, you tend to forget about it. “We really had a fun year. We had great guys, we had a great team obviously, which is kind of tough to do in the American League. You've got guys coming and going, things going on, different guys from the year before, different guys the year after. But just that one time, we had just about every position, every spot that made a difference, it was just neat to be part of that.” Not only was he part of it, but Hall's name will always go down in Wolf Pack history as the guy who scored the game-winning goal in the contest that won the team the Calder Cup. Granted, it came in the first period and was the second goal in a 4-1 win, so it wasn't a situation of high drama, but still a fine thing to be remembered for. “Everyone asks me about that,” Hall laughs, “the kids I coach, they're like 'oh, coach, I heard you scored the game-winning goal'. And I'm like, listen, it's not like it was 2-2 with a minute to go, or overtime. I explained how they do game-winning goals, how they record them. It's neat, and I do get to hold on to that, it's nice to know, it's nice to have been there and kind of nice to remember that.” Hall is a part of a close-knit family, and he is grateful for having had the opportunity to spend the majority of his pro career basically in his own back yard. “I've been real fortunate,” he says. “I went away for college obviously, and the one year in Binghamton, and then to move to Hartford, I wasn't away enough to really appreciate being home. Not that I took it for granted, but it just seemed like it was normal. I would see what other guys had to go through, in terms of leaving the rest of their family. I was here with my parents, my brothers, my sisters, my friends, people I grew up with, aunts, uncles, grandparents, so it was kind of like normal for me. It was just like it had always been, but I knew I was fortunate, and I wouldn't have traded that for anything. “It actually came down to a point where the year I stopped (playing), there was question of, 'we can loan you out to this team or we can see if this team's interested', and I always said from day one that, depending on when it was, when it came to that bouncing around thing, I just told myself that I was going to kind of evaluate my life at that point, and just see where I wanted to go. I didn't lose any passion for it, I just figured I was getting older, I was 29, they're not looking for 29-year-old utilitymen in the NHL or whatever. I was married, I was home still, I owned a house, I just figured it was it was a nice little transition to leave then.” Hall and his wife, Melissa, just celebrated their sixth anniversary in August, make their home in North Haven, and are the proud owners of four dogs. |
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