Before I went left to Banff for the inaugural Hockey Alberta Summit, Taylor Hall made a surprise appearance on my radio show. I was on location, and Meg Storms saw Hall roaming the halls of the TEAM 1260 studio. Hall and the pun-master Gene Principe were in the building voicing a commercial, so Storms asked/told Hall to stop in for a quick chat.

Hall obliged/listened and we had an impromptu chat. It was the first time I’ve had a guest in studio, while I was out on location.

Over the past three seasons I’ve had the opportunity to interview Hall one-on-one, and I feel he’s become much more insightful over the years. That is to be expected, because he’s getting older, but I always sense more and more that he really wants to take a leading role in turning the Oilers around. He’s become somewhat of an "old soul" despite being so young.

It is interesting to watch players develop on and off the ice, and I always look forward to chatting with Hall.

Hall: To be honest I don’t know what that is. I haven’t seen what that that list is, but I have talked to Dallas on a number of occasions. He does seem demanding, but I think that he’s reasonable at the same time. I think that he’s going to expect a lot out of us in hockey and in our fitness levels, but I think that he’s going to be reasonable.

I think that he understands that we’re a team on the rise and that we’re going to have some bumps in the road, but I think that he’s excited to take on the challenge.

Hall: I’m excited. I wish that we were on the ice, like you said. It would be great to partake in the ice sessions with some of the best players in the world. It’s too bad that can’t happen. So we’ll just go there, and I think that it’s just more so that we can learn what Sochi is like and understand some of the drug protocols and all of that kind of stuff; just kind of housekeeping issues.

But, also to get everyone together and maybe get to know each other a bit will be good. I’m excited, I hope that I’ll have a pretty good start to the year, I think that I will. I’ve prepared really well this season and I just have to put myself in a good spot to be on that team.

Hall: My play away from the puck is probably the biggest thing that I’m looking to improve on. You never know what your career entails. I could look back in three years and look at my season last year and be like ‘ah that was a so-so season’ because I’ve improved so much.

I’m still a young player, I’m 21 years old, and I’m far from the peak of my career.  I think that me learning to play better on the defensive side and away from the puck, not only on my own end, but in the neutral zone and the offensive zone. Just put myself in better positions to get that puck back; I think that will make me a much better player, give me a shot at that Olympic team and most importantly help the Oilers more.

Fans need to realize that Hall averaged 1.11 points-per-game last year. If he maintains that, he’ll be a 90-point player. Only Malkin, Giroux and Stamkos matched those totals in 2012. In 2011, only five players matched those totals, and seven did in 2010. If Hall maintains his point production from last year, that will be a hell of a full season.

Last year, he told me he spent the summer working on his passing game, and we saw him become a much better play maker last season. Hall said he committed himself to being better away from the puck this summer, so I suspect we will see a big improvement in his overall game.

Hall: There are a lot of things. I’m definitely a lot more mature than when I came in as a starry-eyed 18 year old. I didn’t know the city well, and I didn’t know how to conduct myself as I do now. I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to be a pro and what it takes to be in the NHL, and especially what it takes to be on a Canadian team in the NHL. There are a lot of things that go into playing in Edmonton and being a good player on a team like we have. You have to be able to grow up pretty fast and I feel like I’ve done that.

Being able to grow up with guys like Jordan [Eberle] and Ryan [Nugent-Hopkins] and Justin [Schultz] and Gags [Sam Gagner] and all of these guys has really helped me. We are going through the same sort of growing pains and we can understand each other. Just having those guys around has made it a lot easier on me, and it’s really allowed me to become the person that I want to be. So it’s a credit to those guys, I love hanging out with those guys and I can’t wait to get the year started with them.

Hall: I can’t say that that is a goal of mine. I’d be really honored to have the captaincy here. Just like what everyone says when the captaincy is brought up there have been so many captains that have played here that are great players and great people. Whoever gets it is going to be someone who will be looked upon to create structure for this team and be someone that everyone can lean on so whether it’s me or Jordan or Andrew Ference, it really doesn’t matter to me. It’s just a letter to throw on a jersey and I think that I’ve found my way of leading and that’s on the ice; playing with passion and playing hard every shift. That wouldn’t really change if I had the captaincy to be honest.

Hall: I can’t say that they really did. Right after my first season I noticed that I was getting the first pairing defence on the road every time and that’s no different for Jordan and Nuge. That’s something that you have to get used to. In my first year I would have been intimidated having to go up against the [Kevin] Bieksas and [Drew] Doughtys of the world, I would have been intimidated by that.

Now I take it as a challenge and I relish that. I think that I’m used to playing against those types of players. It makes you a better player. The better you get in the league, the harder the other players are going to play you, the more the opposing coaches are going to talk about you in their pre-game speech. I think that that’s exciting, that’s what we all want as young players.

Hall: Terrible. You?

Hall: Mine’s terrible. When I played junior in Windsor, my billet was a golf pro and at the start of every season I would go out with him and he’d teach me a lot of stuff. It’s been too long since I was able to do that and my game has just fallen off of the map. I’ve got to get some golf lessons at the start of next summer to get it back where it was at.

Hall: Right now 87 to 92, but I feel like I could be a way better golfer than that.

Hall: Yeah he golfs a lot. I golf once every 2-3 weeks. If you want to get good at something, that’s not how you get good at something.

Hall: (laughs) No, we just play for fun. He knows that he’s better than I am. Sometimes when we get together as teammates, we’ll play two-on-two and we’ll have strokes put on for certain guys. That’s where it gets really exciting, when someone plays above their head and you start hearing the term “sandbagger” thrown around. That’s when it gets pretty fun.

Hall: Easily, Horc was. He’s with Dallas now. He was a great golfer, he loved golf. He was always getting lessons and that sort of thing. Ebs has really stepped it up from what I’ve heard this summer. He’s thrown a few rounds in there in the low 70s, so that’s pretty good.

Hall: Not too much, I mean I definitely put a huge aspect of my workout on rest. I value my off days and I make sure that as much as I’m working hard in the gym, on the ice and on the track that I’m taking good rest days to let my body recover. I think that the last thing that you want to do when you come into camp is be tired and be mentally fatigued. I make sure that I train hard, but that I train smart. I think that every year you go along and you add things to your workout regime and you take away certain things, and I think that I’ve gotten pretty good at doing that.

I was nice to have an offseason where I’m not rehabbing something. One offseason it was my ankle, one summer it was my shoulder and this summer it’s been absolutely nothing, so I’ve just been training and enjoying my summer back home in Kingston.

Hall: I think that that would be an easy assumption and certainly that’s what I’d like to think, but the NHL is not an easy league. Sometimes you can be as prepared as you want and as good as you want, yet it doesn’t work out sometimes. You never know what the season is going to entail for a lot of guys, and I’m just hoping that I can have a good start. Usually I’m a pretty slow starter so I’m working on getting my game back to midseason form as soon as I can. I want to make sure that I can help the team out the best I at the start of the year.

Hall: We don’t have a fantasy draft. During the season we’ll pick winners and losers and every week, and whoever picks the most winners gets some money or whatever. I’m not really to sure what we will do this year, but we had fun with that last year. I love NHL football, but I don’t really know the whole fantasy football part of it. I just love watching it on Sundays and Mondays.

Hall: I don’t really have a team. I definitely like the Patriots a lot. I love the way that [Tom] Brady conducts himself and I love how every year no matter who’s on his roster he elevates his teammates’ games to a point where they become something way more than they were before he was passing to them. Guys like that you can really admire. Those NFLers are some of the best athletes in the world and the way that they can run and catch and jump is just crazy to me.

Hall: I’m not really too sure. Like I said before, it’s up to Dallas and it’s up to Ryan’s recovery with his shoulder. He’s [Ryan Nugent-Hopkins] without a question our number one centre and he’s a guy that I love playing with, but at the same time I don’t think that they’re going to rush him into the lineup, nor should they.

If they feel that I should play centre for four, five, six or seven games, I’m down for that. I can play centre for however long they want me to, but I’ve kind of made it known that I like to play left wing. I’ve grown my game as a left winger a lot in the past three seasons and I like where my game is. So it would be kind of hard to switch now, but like I say, it’s whatever they want me to do. If they want me to work on my faceoffs that’s what I’m going to do.