What Should The Penguins Do With Kevin Hayes?

Not quite a top-6 or bottom-6 player, where should the Pens fit their squarest peg?

The Penguins spent the past offseason signing a handful of free agents to short-term deals and acquiring “unwanted” players with cap hits from other teams in exchange for draft picks. The team has also stated a desire to get younger, and for the first time, they finally have some moderately interesting near-NHL-ready prospects vying for roles this season. With a number of forward spots locked in from the getgo — Crosby, Malkin, Rust, Bunting, O’Connor, Eller, and Rakell, at least — this leaves the team with an unusual overabundance of options for bottom-six forward roles, even if most of the players vying for those roles are marginal veterans who might not have long-term futures with the team and prospects who might not quite be ready yet. It’s not exactly an “embarrassment of riches” so much as it’s “a bunch of dudes they have to stick somewhere,” but it is a dilemma they’ll have to sort out in training camp nonetheless.

The most difficult player in the group to pinpoint a role for, I believe, is Kevin Hayes. Hayes has been given up on by two teams in the past two offseasons; the Flyers ate 50% of his contract just to dump him on the Blues, and after one year, the Blues turned around and gave the Penguins a 2nd round pick to take him off their hands, which became a 2026 2nd and a 2025 3rd when they needed their 2nd back to offer-sheet the Oilers’ RFAs. He has two seasons left at a $3,571,429 cap hit (with Philly still on the hook for the other half), his point total dropped from 54 to 29 last year, and he’s now 32. Because of his contract and his track record, he’ll have to play somewhere - but where, exactly?

What Is Kevin Hayes Good At?

Kevin Hayes was a solid, skilled #3 / #2 tweener center for the Rangers for years, usually ending up in the mid-40 point range and earning more ice team year over year in Manhattan. After a deadline stint with the Jets, he was signed to a massive 7-year x $7.1 million contract by now-fired Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher. In 2022-23, he posted his second-highest point total of his career (18 G, 36 A), bolstered by an increase in power play time on a bad Flyers team. He saw less power play time with St. Louis, dropping from 6 PP goals + 10 PP assists with Philly to 0 + 5 with the Blues, and his overall ice time dropped by about three minutes a game.

JFresh Hockey’s model seems to confirm the eye test on Hayes: he’s a very big center who’s a good passer, but he’s not very physical for his size or very fast, and his play away from the puck has grown worrisome as he’s entered his 30s. Dom Luszczyszyn from The Athletic dug deeper into his rough season in St. Louis (TW: Kasperi Kapanen):

Last year he managed a career-low 1.35 points-per-60 at five-on-five and didn’t really drive play offensively. He didn’t enter the zone with control as much as previous years and he especially didn’t create much off passes…

Part of that is Hayes’ role lower in the lineup — he didn’t have many talented shooters to pass to. His most common linemates were Alexei Toropchenko and Kasperi Kapanen so he deserves some offensive slack. Still, that’s not a situation that likely changes in Pittsburgh given the team’s annual depth troubles past the bottom six.

Hayes’ greatest strength as a center was his ability to protect the puck and distribute, but he’s struggled to drive play on his own as he’s gotten older. If he’s gonna bounce back, he’ll need to play with wingers who can drive the bus at 5 on 5 and finish.

So Where Should The Pens Put Hayes?

The Pens’ top 2 center spots have been laser-carved into diamond for the past 18 years, so Hayes’s only options are: #3 center, #4 center, or a move to left wing on the 3rd or 4th lines (or a healthy scratch.) The Pens don’t have a typical bottom-6, though; Mike Sullivan deploys his 3rd and 4th lines — and his 4th line in particular — almost exclusively in defense-first situations. Of all the league’s forwards who played 250+ minutes at even strength, the Penguins had 5 of the top 9 players with the lowest offensive zone faceoff % in the entire league: Noel Acciari (4th), Jeff Carter (6th), Jansen Harkins (7th), and Lars Eller (9th). The Capitals’ 4th line of Beck Malenstyn, Nic Dowd, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel had the 1, 2, and 3 spots. Pittsburgh (and Washington) use their bottom-6 to eat the maximum amount of defensive zone time possible to minimize the defensive responsibilities for their top two lines. All teams do this to some extent, but not to this crazy of an extreme.

I would not want 32-year-old Kevin Hayes trying to prop up this heavy of a defensive burden when his speed and defensive game have been declining for years. Eller handled the responsibility surprisingly well for his age and with a rotating cast of linemates, maintaining a positive on-ice expected goals-for % even with that rough deployment. Blake Lizotte is a pure defense-first center too who seems to have been signed for the express purpose of bumping Noel Acciari to the wing on the 4th line. I’d bet the Pens open the season with Eller at 3C and Lizotte at 4C.

This bumps Hayes to the wing on the 3rd or 4th lines. If the Pens still see the 4th line as a truly defense-only line, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to pair a player whose primary value is setting up skilled linemates with a couple of defense-first players deployed in a defense-first role. So I’m guessing Hayes opens the year playing 3rd line left wing with Eller at center and one of the medium-skilled right wingers beside them: Rickard Rakell, Valteri Puustinen, or Cody Glass. Lizotte can center the 4th with Acciari and either Beauvillier or Puljujärvi. Hayes would also be a sensible #2 power play option for Sullivan, since it would put his offensive skill to use while mitigating his 5 on 5 time. Essentially, a (hopefully better) Jeff Carter.

What Does The Future Hold For Hayes?

Hayes differs from a lot of the other players the Pens added this offseason because he has a second year left on his contract, so he’ll be close to impossible to move at the trade deadline. Even if he plays surprisingly well, teams aren’t gonna want a full second year of Hayes at $3+ million, and the Pens wouldn’t get enough back to justify burning a retention spot on him. All the other guys on expiring deals — Beauvillier, Glass, Eller, Grzelcyk, Puljujärvi, O’Connor, and (most interestingly) Pettersson — can be flipped at the deadline if they’re healthy and playing well. If any of them struggle, like Beauvillier or Glass, they can be waived with no issue, and the cap hit goes away in a year. Hayes is likely stuck here until at least the 2026 trade deadline, so the team is a bit trapped between playing him and hoping to prop up his trade value, or benching him if he struggles.

I’m guessing the Pens end up using Hayes in a third line wing role to start, hoping that he regains some of his lost offensive juice from seasons past, then having him potentially fill in for the #1 or #2 center spots (or a top wing spot) if Crosby or Malkin miss any time. As much as Hayes is an odd fit for a Mike Sullivan bottom-6, he’s probably the best-suited player on the current team to step into a short-term top-6 center role, since he’ll get the Crosby/Malkin deployment: he’ll play with the team’s better wingers, which plays to his strengths as a passer, and he’ll have minimal defensive zone responsibilities. The Pens really haven’t had a “backup” top-6 center the last two seasons, but it shockingly hasn’t really come up because of Crosby & Malkin’s lucky run of health. But that can’t last forever.

Best Case Scenario: Hayes holds his own in the bottom-6 to start the year and buys the Pens’ prospects some time to gel in Wilkes-Barre, then his combination of filling in on the top two lines admirably and chipping in some power play points raises his stock enough that a center-desperate team trades something small for him at the deadline.

Worst Case Scenario: Hayes’ slowness and defensive deficiencies truly stick out in his miscast bottom-6 role, and his ice time keeps dropping until he’s in the Jeff Carter “4th line / healthy scratch” purgatory, unmovable because of his salary and blocking a roster spot from a younger player.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter what Hayes does, because the purpose of getting him was always to leverage the Pens’ cap space for a draft pick. But if they can also find some way to turn him into a helpful player, that trade will look even better. I’m highly skeptical of the direction Hayes’s game is going in and believe the above worst-case scenario is more likely, but I’ll absolutely be pulling for him. Especially if he’s a little extra motivated in his four games against the team that ate $3.5 mil to send him packing then maybe leaked that he had something to do with Cutter Gauthier’s defection…