One big lesson from the Stanley Cup Playoffs: Trust the talent, not the narratives

Taylor Hall and Mitch Marner are showing that talent ultimately wins out.

The Carolina Hurricanes have cruised through the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, winning each of their first eight games and advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals for the third time in the past eight years. There are a lot of players that have played a big role in that success, but one of the most significant has been veteran forward Taylor Hall.

Simply put, he’s been awesome.

Through the Hurricanes’ first eight games he has three goals, nine assists, 12 total points and has been one of their best possession-drivers. When he’s been on the ice during 5-on-5 play, Carolina is outscoring its opponents 11-1 and has a 71.2 percent expected goals share. He’s earning praise for being a wise veteran and playing playoff-style hockey. He’s become a key part of one of the best teams in the league, and quite honestly been a perfect fit from the moment he arrived at last year’s trade deadline.

There is something weirdly funny about this for me because I remember a decade ago when Taylor Hall was the focal point of some of the wildest, most unhinged storylines and narratives in the NHL.

Basically, a lot of people thought he was the exact opposite of the player that he is now.

Because he was a No. 1 overall pick in Edmonton, and because he was consistently the best player on a bad team that never won anything, he always carried the target on his back for criticism when the bad team inevitably failed. It led to Edmonton trading him straight up for Adam Larsson, which eventually produced what is now, looking back on it, an incredible headline and article talking about the trade when the Oilers eventually won a second-round playoff game:

The stats geeks still hate the Hall trade. The reason? Because their craft isn’t far enough along at this point to quantify the qualities in Larsson’s game that makes Edmonton better.

Conduct a poll of 200 hockey men, and it might be unanimous: Edmonton got what it needed in that deal, and giving up Hall was well worth it.

The 200 hockey men!

The premise behind all of it was simple: Hall was too soft, not gritty enough, and not playoff-worthy enough to help the Oilers win, and they needed to trade what was at the time an in-his-prime, MVP-level talent for a grittier, tougher, second-pairing defenseman to change the makeup of their team.

While Hall is still searching for his first Stanley Cup a decade later, the Oilers haven’t managed to get one in that time, either, and Hall is now significantly closer to getting it than the current Oilers roster is. And he is not just a passenger for it. He is one of the driver’s behind it.

Meanwhile, over on the Western Conference side, the Vegas Golden Knights advanced to the Western Conference Final on Thursday night with a 5-1 win over the Anaheim Ducks.

One of the driving forces behind their playoff run? Mitch Marner.

As of Friday he is leading the playoffs with 18 points through the first two rounds, and opened Thursday’s game, a knockout game, with a highlight reel goal that was a ridiculous display of individual talent, skill and determination.

You have to watch the replays to really appreciate what he did here.

He is having an amazing postseason and has been one of the best players on a team that now has a legitimate chance to win the whole thing.

Based on everything we were told about him during his time in Toronto, that seems almost hard to believe.

Like Hall in Edmonton, Marner became the focal point for criticism every time the Maple Leafs fell short in the playoffs, whether it was his fault or not. While the team itself wanted to keep him, large segments of the media and fan base were finished with him and didn’t exactly give him a friendly exit out of the city. It was a messy split.

Vegas is reaping the benefits of it, and Marner seems to be putting together the type of playoff run that Phil Kessel did when he got free from that same narrative in Toronto.

There is a lesson in all of this.

Trust the talent.

Not the narratives.

Let’s talk about it a little.