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Taylor Hall is rewriting his own career narrative with the Hurricanes in the playoffs

Mike Gould
Mike Gould
Jun 11, 2026, 14:11 EDT
Taylor Hall is rewriting his own career narrative with the Hurricanes in the playoffs
Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

There might not be another player in the entire National Hockey League with as unique a resume as Taylor Hall.

He won two Memorial Cups in junior and was drafted first overall into the NHL. Eight years later, he won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s most valuable player. And now, another eight years later, Hall is putting himself firmly in the conversation for the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded each year to the NHL’s playoff MVP.

Just based on that summary, you might assume Hall to be a shoo-in for Hockey Hall of Fame consideration when his playing career is over. But while his peaks have been as high as any, Hall has also endured many years in the wilderness, fighting his way out of deep chasms that would’ve stopped many other players in their tracks.

The Carolina Hurricanes are Hall’s seventh NHL team. He joined them without much fanfare midway through the 2024-25 season, with his arrival significantly overshadowed by Mikko Rantanen’s abbreviated tenure with the club. Nobody, fans and media alike, expected that Hall would score three times as many points in the 2026 playoffs alone as Rantanen ever would in Carolina.

In a situation reminiscent of the emergence of “That ’70s Line” with the Los Angeles Kings more than a decade ago, the 34-year-old Hall has morphed into the ideal mentor for a pair of younger, skilled forwards on one of Carolina’s top units. He’s tied with Jackson Blake for the team lead in playoff scoring, with 18 points in 17 games; their center, Logan Stankoven, is first in goals and third in points. In a playoff run where opposing teams have fixated upon shutting down Carolina’s top young forwards, like Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov, the Hall line has done a wonderful job of carrying the mail.

The Hurricanes paid the Chicago Blackhawks all of a third-round pick for their role in the three-team trade, and that was primarily to retain half of Rantanen’s salary. Carolina took on the full force of Hall’s $6 million cap hit at a time when few other teams would, although Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky hinted at the time that he saw more in Hall than most.

“Taylor’s a huge piece too and, ultimately, one of the things that we felt our team could stand to have was a little bit of an upgrade on sort of skill and offensive punch,” Tulsky said January 2025. “Taylor brings a lot of skill and some size and some speed, and we think he’s going to fit and help upgrade our scoring punch also.”

Nearly 18 months later, Hall leads the Hurricanes with an eye-popping 72.58% expected goals percentage at 5-on-5 in these playoffs (via Natural Stat Trick). With Hall on the ice at full strength, Carolina has outshot its opponents 142-62 and outscored them 20-8. Not bad for a player the Hurricanes basically got for free.

Carolina’s playoff run has been fuelled by the contributions of other teams’ cast-offs, including Shayne Gostisbehere, Mark Jankowski, Sean Walker, and now Brandon Bussi. But Hall’s story is the most fascinating of them all, taking into account the enormous wave of hype that swept him into the league, his early successes, and the fallow periods that led him to change teams a half-dozen times.

When the Edmonton Oilers drafted Hall with the No. 1 overall pick in 2010, they undoubtedly hoped that he’d bring his championship pedigree from the OHL with him into the big leagues. They probably didn’t expect that he’d finally make his first Stanley Cup Final appearance a full 16 years later, much less with the team that beat the Oilers for the Cup back in 2006.

Hall was the first of four No. 1 picks the Oilers made in a six-year span, but his tenure in Edmonton only overlapped with Connor McDavid’s for one season. After that, Bob McKenzie tweeted out the immortal words that signalled the end of Hall’s time in the City of Champions: “Trade is one for one.” Adam Larsson became an Oiler, and Hall went to the New Jersey Devils, where he’d make his first playoff appearance and win the Hart.

Hall scored 93 points, 41 more than any of his teammates, while dragging the Devils to the postseason in 2018. In the eight seasons since, Hall has surpassed the 60-point mark just once. Part of that might be due to the effects of the arthroscopic knee surgery he underwent midway through the 2018-19 season; that stretch also includes two pandemic-shortened years. But in the years after his MVP win, Hall seemed to lose a bit of the clutch factor that made him such a highly-touted prospect, a factor which he appears to have regained at the best possible time with these Hurricanes.

The savvy, versatile, grizzled veteran role suits Hall tremendously. There’s a decent case to be made that he’s never been best-suited to leading a team (his Hart year notwithstanding), but he slots in just perfectly as a secondary option to insulate a core group of stars. We saw it during his time with the Boston Bruins, where he played second fiddle beautifully behind David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand on a team that should’ve made much more noise than it did. And now, with Carolina, we’re witnessing the peak of Hall’s reformation as a top-notch support player.

Not every player follows a linear path in the hockey world, and as we approach the draft later in June, it’s worth remembering that even the most talked-about, blue-chip prospects don’t always become the most consistent NHLers. Skill, speed, and physicality are essential for someone looking to carve out a long and successful career, but the capacity for personal reinvention might even be more important. Hall’s path might not put him on track for the Hockey Hall of Fame, but the Hurricanes wouldn’t be in the Stanley Cup Final without him becoming the player he is today.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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