Hall signed an extension to remain in Carolina, after being acquired by the team part way through the season.

• Player Overview
• Comparables
• Final Analysis

The Carolina Hurricanes signed winger Taylor Hall to a three-year contract extension last week, which carries a $3.17M cap hit. The deal will kick in for the 2025-26 season, and comes with a no-movement clause.

Below, we assess how the contract looks for the Hurricanes.

Player Overview

A standout in junior hockey, Taylor Hall quickly emerged as a top prospect with the Windsor Spitfires, helping the team to capture back-to-back Memorial Cups in 2009 and 2010. From there, Hall was selected first overall by the Edmonton Oilers, and made the jump to the NHL immediately.

Hall solidified himself as one of the Oilers’ top forwards over the next six seasons, scoring 132 goals and 328 points across 382 games with the team. However, the Oilers made the shocking decision to trade Hall for Adam Larsson in 2016, sending the winger to the New Jersey Devils.

With the Devils, Hall saw the highest peak of his career in the 2017-18 season, earning a Hart Trophy after posting 39 goals and 93 points in 76 games.

He spent part of another two seasons with the Devils before eventually being dealt to the Arizona Coyotes at the 2020 trade deadline, as a pending unrestricted free agent.

Since then, however, Hall has seen a pretty big offensive decline and has bounced around the league a bit. After scoring at an 82-game pace of 29 goals and 74 points up to the end of the 2019-20 season, Hall has managed an 82-game pace of just 19 goals and 51 points in the five years since then.

At the same time, the winger has proven to be a good fit with the Carolina Hurricanes, since being acquired by the team part way through the season. While he won’t post the numbers he once did and still doesn’t have the most well-rounded game, Hall can still provide solid middle-six offense.

Comparables

Below, we examine how Hall’s deal compares to recent contracts for other forwards. For more information on the stats/tables used below, including how the payment rate in projections is determined, visit the About the Site page.

With Hall turning 34 years old in November, the comparables used will generally be wingers who were near his age in the first year of their contract, with select centers included as well. Note: ages listed in the table are based on a player’s age by Dec. 31 in the first year of their contract.

3 YEARS

The three-year term on Hall’s contract comes in a little bit longer than expected. Generally, we’ve seen most wingers around Hall’s age and production take a two-year deal.

Based on some of the more recent comparables though, Hall’s $3.17M cap hit still looks like a steal.

All four comps above would’ve projected a three-year deal for the winger to come in between $5.1M and $5.8M.

At the same time, there were some factors as to why Hall wasn’t likely to see a three-year deal come in quite that high. Hall was older than a lot of the players listed, which makes a three-year deal more risky for him than others, likely driving down the cap hit. Perhaps more importantly, Hall’s production differs from a lot of the comps listed, in the sense that he’s the only player above who had a substantial decline with his signing year stats, compared to his career stats.

But while a three-year deal for Hall coming in above $5M may not have been wildly likely, his cap hit still comes in well below what would’ve been expected for a three-year deal. Comparing him to Nino Niederreiter in particular, Hall’s scoring pace in his signing year was very similar, but he didn’t come close to Niederreiter’s $4M cap hit (which comes to more than $4.3M when adjusted for a $95.5M salary cap).

As a result, a cap hit at just above $3M looks really good for the Hurricanes. They may have given more term on the contract than expected, but it almost surely resulted in a reduced cap hit for the winger.

2 YEARS

Two years would’ve been the expected length for Hall’s contract. We’ve seen quite a few recent examples of players around Hall’s age and production sign two-year deals, such as Jason Zucker, Vladimir Tarasenko and others.

Some of the comps would’ve projected Hall up around $5.5M or above on a two-year deal, which was unrealistic. However, even looking towards the bottom of the table, every single comp would’ve projected Hall above the $3.17M cap hit that he signed for on his three-year extension.

We also get some better comps, with Vladimir Tarasenko and Gustav Nyquist both also seeing lower signing year production than career production. Meanwhile, Viktor Arvidsson was coming off an injury-plagued season when he signed his deal in Edmonton, but still managed to reach a $4M cap hit on a two-year deal..

So while Hall may not have been able to get a significantly higher cap hit on a two-year deal if he tested free agency, the projections from the deals for the likes of Tarasenko, Nyquist and Arvidsson point to the fact that it could’ve been around $4M, or even a bit above.

Final Analysis

With the deal, the Hurricanes gave Hall a bit more term than expected, but likely got him signed at a lower cap hit as a result.

Most comps would’ve projected a two-year contract for Hall instead, which likely would’ve hit at least a $4M cap hit. However, not a single comp listed above at either two or three years would’ve projected Hall’s cap hit to come in as low as it did. So while the Hurricanes absorb a bit of risk with a three-year contract instead of opting for a two-year deal, they also lock in Hall at a very team-friendly cap hit.

The deal does come with trade protection, in the form of a no-movement clause. It would become a limited no-trade clause in 2027 if Hall doesn’t reach 35 points in the 2026-27 season (per PuckPedia.com), but obviously, it would’ve been great for Carolina to avoid major trade protection with the extension altogether. Again though, it’s a low enough cap hit that even if Hall faces a steeper decline in the coming years, it won’t carry huge cap implications.

Ultimately, this is a good bet for the Hurricanes and should be worth the risk. Hall has been a good fit in Carolina thus far, and if he can post between 40-50 points per season, the contract will be a win for Carolina.