Taylor Hall is a really cool point in position and player type evolution. I don't want to get into a whole dissertation about it...but Hall is the "failed" (that's too strong) response to the hyperspeed game. And that's why it took a while to get to where we are now in the mid 2020's (ugh...).
Crosby came in and was sort of the new mold. He could play at an insane pace ,but unlike McDavid, Crosby developed in the older school world. And his adaptation is still somewhat war-like. Right? He's ready for battle. They call him the superstar grinder because he can play on the wall, and he's amazing at puck protection and all that stuff. And then you see the next iteration of that - which is McDavid - where McDavid isn't so much of a grinder but he's an all-world rush offense creator because he grew up in sort of the no-touching, not a lot killers in lineups anymore. Crosby went against Derian Hatcher as an 18 year old, ya know?
I'm not saying McDavid isn't eligible to be hit or anything or hasn't faced any physical players. But the emphasis - overwhelmingly - is on d-men that can skate, that can absorb rushes, that aren't doing backward crossovers, right? So, to be the best...he needed to not only play at pace to be better than the rush absorbers but also to control the puck at that pace.
In the middle, you have a guy like Taylor Hall. Who plays at an insane pace. But at a cost. He's not a good distributor compared to the elite players...1st overall type players .So, the development response was "you can beat guys with speed right now...so emphasize speed" because in the first few years out of the lockout, there were still some old school redwoods hanging in there...but if you could get corner on them, you either scored or you drew a penalty. That's Taylor Hall. But it was more of a head down style of play, a little lower in mental processing, but a lot of physical tools. Yakupov isn't dissimilar in some respects.
So, that makes Hall a tough guy to place because he's a little bit linemate agnostic because of his style. Chances are the center isn't getting the puck back once it gets to Hall. He's going to hole with it and he's gonna see what happens.
Hall is also a product of the over-speed game that happened in and around 2010 or so that I talk about...where guys were put on the rink to just be fast and destroy...and the result, frankly, was no different than when it was 6'4" guys that couldn't play being put out there to destroy. In 2002, it was a 6'4" guy grabbing onto Peter Forsberg. In 2012, it was 5'10" Tyler Kennedy skating as fast as he could at Nicklas Backstrom. Those netted really similar results...even injury wise it felt like, as every NHL player racked up two concussions a piece from 2006 to 2013...
It's fun to watch this evolution and attempts with defensemen too. You watch the drafts and you can see the utter uncertainty with the position evolution. And it wasn't until, what, like the 2016 or so draft that most teams understood what you needed to do in terms of maximizing defensemen and now you have a run of these star guys...Makar, Hughes, Heiskanen, Nemec is gonna be a player, etc.