The Carolina Hurricanes wasted little time in reaching an extension for trade-acquisition Taylor Hall.
The team announced Wednesday that Hall had signed a three-year, $9.5 million contract through the 2027-28 season. That came roughly three months after the Hurricanes traded for the former Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP and with Carolina having advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
In a Zoom call with reporters, general manager Eric Tulsky said the two sides had been talking about a deal since January when the Hurricanes acquired Hall in the blockbuster deal centered on Mikko Rantanen’s arrival. The 33-year-old Hall was making $6 million this year with free agency looming.
“Whether it’s playoffs or not, the conversations are happening,” Hall said. “With my family, we have a baby coming in the fall. Just as the playoffs were about to start, I think we were pretty much set on what the deal would look like. So that allowed me to just kind of play int he playoffs with a clear mind.
“And that’s important to me. I want to play as well as I can for this team.”
The announcement came a day after the Hurricanes closed out a five-game series against the New Jersey Devils. Hall scored the first of Carolina’s four second-period goals that helped them erase a 3-0 deficit before winning in double overtime.
“I don’t think either of us ever doubted that it would get done,” Tulsky said.
Hall, a 15-year veteran who won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s MVP in the 2017-18 season, had 18 goals and 24 assists in 77 regular-season games between Chicago and Carolina. He also had two assists in the five-game series win against New Jersey. He had missed most of the previous season due to knee surgery but led Carolina skaters with four power-play goals in the regular season after his arrival.
Hall said he felt comfortable immediately after his arrival. Tulsky pointed to Hall’s speed as the perfect fit for a philosophical approach built on an aggressive forecheck and controlling the puck on the offensive zone.
“I’m still picking up the finer points of more or less our D-zone system,” Hall said. “But the other two-thirds of the ice is about pressure and trying to get the puck back in our hands.
“I’ve had a lot of fun getting to play with this team and just the high-pressure system and way that we play, it allows me to play with not a lot of thinking and it allows me to just go out there and hunt — hunt down pucks and do all the things that I think I’m pretty good at.”
The Hurricanes acquired the former No. 1 overall draft pick on Jan. 24 in the three-team deal that snagged Rantanen from Colorado, though they later sent Rantanen to Dallas with forward Logan Stankoven as the primary trade-deadline return when it became clear Rantanen was unlikely to sign long-term to stay with Carolina.
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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/NHL
