With the regular season rearing it’s ugly end, the Philadelphia Flyers are heading into the offseason with plenty of question marks all throughout their organization; whether it’s the higher-ups, the front office, and/or the player personnel, changes are afoot.
One name that has been rummaging around the trade rumours for months on end is Kevin Hayes, and just based on his play in the second half of this season, it seems like player and team are most likely going to part ways.
Former general manager Chuck Fletcher had conversations with several interested teams regarding their $7.142 million dollar centreman and even with his departure from the front office, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman believes that trade talks will continue to heat up.
Head coach, John Tortorella, will have a big say on the roster he has to coach and that has already begun with a few one-on-ones behind closed doors with interim GM Daniel Brière as well as stepping away from the bench to sit in the press box or watch in the locker room in games against Ottawa and Buffalo from last week.
It’s not as definitive as James van Riemsdyk walking into free agency, but Hayes’ performance since the end of January is rather concerning, considering the emergence of younger players and how they’ve usurped the player who was commonly believed to be one of the 2 most important faces of the offense coming into the season.
There’s no denying that he was playing very well at the beginning of the season. He scored 9 goals and 28 points in his first 27 games, while averaging 19:10 of ice time and taking 79 shots on goal. In fact in those 27 games, he was held off the scoresheet only 7 times, which is a feat of its own when you factor in how bad the Flyers were from November onwards.
His 200-foot game was missing, his defense was sub-par at best, and Tortorella is a coach of accountability and he finally cracked his whip on the team’s leading scorer after benching him in a mid-December game against New Jersey – playing 9:47 in the victory – before making him a healthy scratch the following game against the New York Rangers.
There was a lot of outrage towards this move, especially from the national media simply because he was the team’s leading scorer and it tied into the infamous John Tortorella. However, for those tuned into the Flyers and for those who watched the Flyers from the start of the season, they’d be able to tell you exactly why the move was merited and expected. Tortorella had already benched several players before Hayes for lack of effort and dismal play. Hayes’ incessant turnovers, slowing the game down, lack of backchecking, and sometimes “lazy” play drove Tortorella and the rest of the fan base irate.
Hayes then slipped into a 10-game goalless drought where he picked up 4 assists with wavering ice-times that averaged out to 15:56 – not what you would expect from someone who should be your number one centre with Sean Couturier out of the lineup.
He regained his mojo heading into the New Year with 6 goals and 13 points in 12 games, while averaging 17:12 ice time, but has since fallen victim to a 26-game stretch where he has scored just 2 goals and 8 points, while only registering 53 shots on goal. This stretch also includes a goalless drought that has reached 22 games.
You can make the argument that because he is second in team scoring with 53 points – albeit in 75 games – and because he is nearing his career-high of 55 points that he set in 2018-19, he’s played fine. However, there is no denying that his lack of effort and hustle has shown and his enthusiasm has dropped severely, while the rest of the team has shown fight, charisma, and hunger. Travis Konecny should not still be leading this team in points, especially after having missed 16 games due to injury.
For a point of reference, the wheels fell off offensively for the Flyers after Konecny went down with an injury in their late afternoon tilt against the Calgary Flames on the 20th of February. Things had even reached a halt before then but coincidentally it came after Konecny’s hat-trick that set a career-high in goals. The team started losing as he went 13 games without a goal after a surprising run of 12 games where they went 9-3-0 and had a legitimate eye at the Wild Card race for the first time all season.
Nevertheless, since the Calgary game, which has spanned 18 games:
Kevin Hayes: 18 games, 0 goals, 6 assists, -3, 16:44 TOI
Morgan Frost: 18 games, 7 goals, 15 points, -1, 17:24 TOI
Owen Tippett: 18 games, 8 goals, 12 points, even rating, 20:35 TOI
Noah Cates: 18 games, 4 goals, 10 points, +2, 18:24 TOI
Joel Farabee: 18 games, 4 goals, 10 points, +3, 17:30 TOI
Scott Laughton: 18 games, 5 goals, 8 points, -2, 17:20 TOI
Tyson Foerster: 8 games, 3 goals, 7 points, +2, 16:34 TOI
Tony DeAngelo: 16 games: 1 goal, 9 points, -4, 20:01 TOI
Rasmus Ristolainen: 17 games, 1 goal, 6 points, -2, 20:32 TOI
Cam York: 17 games, 1 goal, 6 points, -4, 19:02 TOI
Travis Sanheim: 18 games: 3 goals, 6 points, +1, 19:37 TOI
Kevin Hayes has been outperformed – even by rookie Tyson Foerster in 10 less games – by nearly everyone on the roster not named Ivan Provorov (3 points in 18 games) and James van Riemsdyk (4 points in 17 games). He has been stapled into a third line role, evidenced by his lack of ice time compared to the rest of his counterparts, and he hasn’t done much offensively to end the season on a high note.
Even those players that haven’t racked up the points or have gone through dry spells of their own, they have shown some kind of intangible that makes them valuable on or off the puck – Hayes hasn’t.
Not to say that the other players have been world-beaters either with their performances, but the effort is on full display and there’s a lot of positives that can be taken from what we’ve seen from Frost, Tippett, Cates, Farabee, and York. Even when Farabee was struggling to score and endured a 26-game goalless drought, the effort and compete was still there. He had chance after chance but was either being robbed by the goaltender, hitting the post, or having a grade-A chance go just wide. However, you were still able to spot him making good plays on and off the puck.
The Colorado Avalanche, Boston Bruins, and Carolina Hurricanes were all reportedly interested in Hayes’ services at one point in time this season. Friedman alluded to the Columbus Blue Jackets being a good destination because of his friendships and relationships with Johnny Gaudreau and Rick Nash – part of their player development. Salary will have to be retained and it will most likely be in the neighbourhood of 25-30% – $1.78 million to $2.142 million. The return won’t be substantial either, but the open spot on the roster is what is most important.
If and when Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson return next season, on top of the fact that players like Tyson Foerster, Bobby Brink, and Elliot Desnoyers will be fighting for spots, Hayes is essentially blocking their path. The Flyers could run with a top-6 of Travis Konecny-Sean Couturier-Cam Atkinson and Joel Farabee-Morgan Frost-Owen Tippett, leaving plenty of room for a third line that could comprise of Tyson Foerster, Noah Cates, and Scott Laughton or maybe even Bobby Brink. Nicolas Deslauriers, Elliot Desnoyers, and Scott Laughton could be a pretty handy 4th line if the personnel is to be in-house.
The Flyers aren’t supposed to be world-beaters any time soon, big changes should be coming in the form of a rebuild and not a retool, and it’s not far-fetched at all to believe a Hayes deal can be made even with his term and salary. As long as the Flyers retain around 2 million and don’t expect a substantial return, they will be able to alleviate over $5 million in cap space for 3 seasons, while giving chances to younger prospects to take the reins. 16-18 minutes of ice time will be made available with his departure, ditto for James van Riemsdyk. The Flyers have some interesting players currently marinating in the minors that should take the leap next season with Tortorella and Brière steering this ship to land.
The Hayes experiment did not come to fruition as Chuck Fletcher and the Flyers had hoped. The market dictated his term and price because he was the big-fish that summer and being one of the best available centres means you get the biggest boost of your career in terms of a contract. Matt Duchene and Joe Pavelski were also free agents that summer with the former taking a pay cut to sign in Nashville and the latter surprising most with a 3-year, $21-million dollar deal with Dallas.
Fletcher loved his bidding wars and he ended up beating the Chicago Blackhawks, Colorado Avalanche, and Boston Bruins to the punch to acquire Hayes. The Flyers traded for his negotiating rights before hammering down a 7-year deal that was worth $50 million.
Everyone knew an overpay was coming, but the idea and hope at the time was that this move would allow Nolan Patrick to develop at his own pace as the team’s third line centre before being able to take the reins of a top-6 pivot. Claude Giroux could remain on the wing with Sean Couturier as the first line centre and as long as Hayes could provide decent-to-good secondary production down the middle, the Flyers would be more than happy. They also had wingers in Jakub Voracek, Travis Konecny, James van Riemsdyk, and Joel Farabee, so there was plenty of balance, depth, and skill to go around. Not to mention the offensive production – or so they had hoped – from their defensemen in Ivan Provorov, Shayne Gostisbehere, and Travis Sanheim.
Injuries took their toll, lackadaisical effort was brought to the forefront, and the team just dug themselves a deeper and deeper hole. Fast forward 4 years into the future and the Flyers have a completely different outlook than the summer of 2019.
Things aren’t rosy or peachy anymore, the young guns who were touted as one of the best farm systems in hockey haven’t played to that potential, and the front office’s plan to turn this team into a contender flopped on several different occasions, but they kept going into the same well for the same solutions – eventually it dried up and so did their chances of becoming a contender.
The future of this organization, or at least for the time being, will be handed off to players like Frost, Farabee, Tippett, and Cates teaming up with veterans like Couturier and Atkinson – contracts that won’t be moved any time soon.
Hayes no longer fits the picture, his salary is astronomical for his overall game play, and with Tortorella looking for effort at the very least, it seems improbable that he will return next season, especially with the head coach having some say in the roster.
