Don't think Thornton would either:
A) Leave San Jose
B) Sign somewhere else cheap to be a healthy scratch

A) I think he would. It's not like he's been in SJS his entire career. He may want 1 last chance at a cup and SJS doesn't look like they can do it with their roster rn

B) The scratch part is a fair point, but with injuries he would probably play about 40 games anyway. Could be a good thing for him not to play the full 82 game season when he's 41

Why does Hall sign for one year as a thirty year old!
Kind of dumb on his behalf.

Cause he wants to win and he's never been on a team good enough to do so. He bets on himself for 1 year to play on a better team do his stats go up so that next year he can get a bigger contract

He'll get 9.5-12 per as is
If he tears a knee in middle of that year and is done.
That's short sighted and dumb!

Yeah it's a risk but it could pay off if he performs well with mackinnon/rantanen/others (which I'd say is pretty likely)

Multi year deal with a team that could contend for 5-7 yrs at $10M (avg) get some of that as a guarantee
vs
prove yourself for $9 on a couple bad knees.
His agent is holding out for a stupid payday, he'd never let Hall do that, as no agent should

Parise, Semin, Hossa all signed expensive 1 year deals as UFAs. Its not unheard of. And there arent many teams that will be able to sign him to a long term 10M+ AAV deal that also have a long cup window anyway

EDIT: Parise was actually an RFA when he signed the 1 year deal, my bad. but Semin and Hossa both signed 1 year deals as UFAs