{"id":737656,"date":"2026-06-15T05:37:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T05:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/737656\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T05:37:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T05:37:17","slug":"taylor-hall-goes-from-no-1-pick-to-mvp-to-stanley-cup-champion-with-hurricanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/737656\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Hall goes from No. 1 pick to MVP to Stanley Cup champion with Hurricanes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taylor Hall<\/a>\u00a0was a No. 1 pick in the draft in 2010. He was the\u00a0NHL’s MVP in 2018.<\/p>\n

Now, he is a\u00a0Stanley Cup champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never know. You never know what kind of turn your life\u2019s going to take,\u201d Hall said after hoisting the trophy. “It was heavy. It was heavy, unbalanced but amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

No longer in the prime of his career, the 34-year-old Hall was one of the biggest reasons the Carolina Hurricanes<\/a> won 16 of 19 games during this playoff run.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s fast, he\u2019s physical (and) he makes great plays with the puck,\u201d defenseman Jaccob Slavin said. \u201cHe\u2019s selling out to block shots. And so you need that. He\u2019s really just been a complete player this whole playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall took on a workmanlike role on a line alongside 23-year-old Logan Stankoven and 22-year-old Jackson Blake. That trio led the way through the first three rounds of the playoffs and in the final against Vegas. Hall was a force in every way \u2014 generating offense, hammering opponents and sacrificing himself on defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery line on our team has a physical aspect, and I think it falls on me to play like that,\u201d Hall said. \u201cFlorida last year, there wasn\u2019t a guy on their team that didn\u2019t hit and didn\u2019t make it really, really hard to be on the ice against them and you watch and learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall fit in quickly with Carolina<\/p>\n

With Chicago, Hall played Carolina on Jan. 20, 2025, and liked what he saw in a hard-fought overtime loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a first-hand glimpse of the intensity in which we play,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n

His agent had approached him about the Hurricanes’ interest in him and a few days later he joined them as part of the same\u00a0three-team trade\u00a0that got them Mikko Rantanen. Initially, Hall was not in shape to play coach Rod Brind’Amour’s brand of hockey.<\/p>\n

But general manager Eric Tulsky liked what he saw in Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe brings a blend of speed, skill and heaviness that really fits for us,\u201d Tulsy said. \u201cHe has the ability to get pucks into the zone, win pucks along the way and he has the vision and creativity and skill to get pucks to the middle and create scoring chances off it. We spend a lot of time in the offensive zone, and we need players like him who can not just win the battle along the wall but get it to premium ice and create those top-tier chances and he\u2019s been able to do that for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

After starting in Edmonton and also playing for New Jersey, Arizona, Buffalo, Boston and Chicago, Carolina felt right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been kind of everywhere,\u201d Hall said. \u201cI got here and felt really at home within a couple days.\u201d<\/p>\n

He settled in the Raleigh area, and before the end of April\u00a0signed a three-year extension\u00a0worth just over $3 million annually. A lot went into it, including a bad experience as a free agent during the pandemic and being able to drive his dog to his offseason home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was happy here, and I love the way we play and ultimately I saw this as a place that I think we could be here,\u201d Hall said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I envisioned, and everything else seemed like it made a lot of sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brind’Amour as a player was a grinder, a defense-first center who made a living out of stopping players like Hall. As a coach, he knew all about Hall’s skill as a winger, his 93-point season in 2017-18 with New Jersey that got him the Hart Trophy and the kind of offensive talent the Hurricanes were getting.<\/p>\n

The player who arrived was nothing like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t bring any of that, \u2018I\u2019m an MVP\u2019 and I\u2019m going to do it this way.’ It was, \u2018What do I have to do?\u2019\u201d Brind’Amour said. \u201cWhen he first got with us, he was playing like 12 minutes a night. It didn\u2019t matter. It was whatever he has to do to win. That\u2019s refreshing, and that\u2019s good on him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall helped Carolina reach the 2025 Eastern Conference Final, then he and the team faltered against the defending-champion Panthers. That turned out to be an important lesson for a guy in his 30s thirsty for a title.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t play well in that conference final at all, and I think just the way that Florida played and the way that I played, it was a learning experience for me even at 33,\u201d Hall said. \u201cIt was just different way to play in the playoffs. There\u2019s a way to play, and there\u2019s a way that the really good teams do it. I took it over the summer and tried to just get better and better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting that into practice allowed Hall to set a record. His 18 seasons between getting drafted by Edmonton are the most before hoisting the Stanley Cup in league history for a No. 1 pick.<\/p>\n

All because Hall made a conscious decision to fit exactly what the Hurricanes needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great for the role that we need him to play,\u201d Slavin said. \u201cI think he still has all the talent in the world, and you witness it night in and night out. He\u2019s been great. And, yeah, has he adapted a little bit to how we play here? I think so. But that just speaks to the player that he is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taylor Hall\u00a0was a No. 1 pick in the draft in 2010. He was the\u00a0NHL’s MVP in 2018. Now,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-737656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}