Winning a Stanley Cup is hard, especially if you’re a highly touted draft pick.
Having this immense pressure of coming out on top is the pedigree that Taylor Hall has carried right next to his name wherever he has gone in his lengthy career. He was the No. 1 overall selection back in 2010 by the Edmonton Oilers. He won a Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player in 2018. Now, his name will be the ninth of the last 20 first overall picks in the NHL Draft from 2000 to 2020 to have emerged as a Stanley Cup Champion in their career.
It’s unfair to calculate that statistic with the recent first overall picks, given the youth of their careers, but Hall solidified what could eventually be a career worthy of a plaque hung in the Hockey Hall of Fame one day.
To recap, Hall is well off from the player he was in his prime, but displayed shades of that skill he’s been known for. The 34-year-old has been included in five separate trades throughout his NHL career; the feeling is nothing new, but after finding some real stability in the Hurricanes organization, he was able to hoist a Stanley Cup. His 1,062 career games with seven different franchises across 16 seasons clocked in as the second-most games by a No. 1 pick before his first Cup behind Washington’s Alex Ovechkin, as the 2004 first overall pick, who also won his Cup against the Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena in 2018.
The Oilers dealt him in a one-for-one trade for Adam Larsson back in June of 2016, three seasons into a seven-year, $42MM ($6MM) contract originally inked after his entry-level deal. Two seasons later, Hall peaked as the NHL’s MVP with the Devils, scoring 93 points in 2017-18. A few years later, the Devils traded him to the Arizona Coyotes in December of 2019. That offseason after the ‘bubble’, Hall cashed in with the Buffalo Sabres but only for a year at what would be his highest career cap hit of $8MM for the 2020-21 season. The Sabres didn’t end up paying him all of that money. At the deadline, he was dealt to the Boston Bruins, who took on half of his salary, where he broke the seal into the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and later inked a four-year, $24MM ($6MM AAV) deal, but he wouldn’t end that contract in a spoked-B.
Boston, in need of a salary cap dump, sent him to the Blackhawks, where he needed knee surgery, limiting him to 10 games in 2023-24. Not long after, in the next season, he arrived in Raleigh and was a key name along with Mikko Rantanen in the trade fiasco that saw many parts moved around the NHL between Colorado, Dallas, and Carolina.
Right after scoring 18 points in 31 games, adding 6 points in Carolina’s run in 2024-25, Eric Tulsky signed him to a budget-friendly three-year contract at $9.5MM ($3.16MM AAV) to remain with the Hurricanes, using a No-Movement Clause in all three seasons. This contract, set to end in 2027-28, looked likely to be the Alberta natives final stretch at a championship, as he would be 36 towards the end of that deal. In the first year of that contract, he scored 48 points in 80 games in the regular season and was an integral piece for Carolina in the playoffs, scoring 19 points in 19 games, and led the Hurricanes in rating (+14).
Entering the third period of game six in the finals, the Hurricanes scored 15 goals in potential series-clinching games in 2026. Hall’s importance rounded out the Hurricanes’ elite offensive trio that included young talents Jackson Blake and Logan Stankoven, who, along with Hall, factored into 10 of those 15 goals. Overall, that trio has 22 points in four near series-clinching contests: Hall with three goals for nine points, Blake with four goals for seven points, and Stankoven with three goals for six points. That line led the 2026 playoffs in goals for, with 17 tallies; no other line scored more than 10.
For a player who formerly played 20 minutes of average ice time in the playoffs as an MVP at age 26, Hall fit into a role where he settled in the eye of Carolina’s storm and learned more and more as his career progressed, what it took to win, from surpassing the first, second, and third rounds in various playoff stints. All of that culminated in him finally getting his name etched onto the Cup. He’s the first of the Edmonton Oilers No. 1 overall picks to win it all, over Connor McDavid (2015), Nail Yakupov (2012), and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (2011).
Photo Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images
