NHL trade grades: Penguins get Kevin Hayes from Blues but he’s not the answer

The trade

Penguins get: Center Kevin Hayes, second-round pick in 2025

Blues get: Future considerations

Sean Gentille: Heading into their offseason, the Penguins’ need for a viable third center was clear. Lars Eller brought a necessary element to their lineup (and locker room) last season, but he’s defense-only at this point in his career. The single biggest issue behind Pittsburgh’s decline over the last few years had been a lack of viable secondary scoring. Blame former GM Ron Hextall for that. Something had to change.

In that regard, acquiring Hayes makes some amount of sense. Pittsburgh needed options, and Hayes qualifies. Just barely, though. If we’re a few days into July and he’s their main addition, they’ll have failed.

The main issue is that Hayes’ point production and overall effectiveness as an offensive player has fallen off pretty dramatically over the last few seasons, starting with 2022-23, when he fell out of favor with Flyers coach John Tortorella. St. Louis took a half-price flyer on him before last season, getting Philadelphia to retain half of his cap hit and generally playing him in a bottom-six role on a fringe playoff team. The end result was 29 points in 79 games. His linemates were an issue, and that’s on track to be the case with Pittsburgh too. He is a player who feels like a fringe third-liner, and his projections back up that sentiment.

There are reasons not to dislike this for the Penguins. Hayes, like we said, gives them a fallback plan. At $3.57 million, he’s not breaking their salary cap bank either, and the second-round sweetener is nice, given GM Kyle Dubas’ ongoing attempt to rebuild their prospect base. It doesn’t make them worse for this season, and it makes them a little better moving forward.

St. Louis, meanwhile, gets out from under a contract that didn’t make sense to add in the first place, and they do it without retaining any salary. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Pittsburgh grade: C+
St. Louis grade: C+

Dom Luszczyszyn: The Penguins entered the offseason with a big hole at third line center so it’s not surprising they wasted no time trying to fill it. I just don’t think Kevin Hayes was the right answer.

For starters, the league’s oldest team isn’t getting any younger here. Hayes is 32 and his best years are behind him. 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. Playmaking was once a major strength for Hayes, but his chance assist rate dropped from 4.1 per 60 to 2.0 with the Blues according to data tracked by Corey Sznajder.

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. It points to Hayes not being an offensive driver in his own right.

At the very least, Hayes showed he can hold his own defensively in that role last season, but his relative defensive numbers should be taken with some grain of salt given the easier usage. He doesn’t have much of a history in that regard.

All of that is exactly why the Blues had to add a sweetener for the Penguins to take Hayes off their hands. He’s not worth his current cap hit, even with the Flyers still retaining half of it, and the cost of that favor was a second-round pick in 2025. That arrangement is what takes this deal from “What are you doing, Pittsburgh?” to “Fine, whatever.”

Hayes may not be the answer to Pittsburgh’s problems and from that vantage point, this doesn’t feel ideal for a team that missed the playoffs last season. But a free second-round pick is a free second-round pick and that makes this deal all right for both sides.

Pittsburgh grade: B
St. Louis grade: B

(Photo: Jeff Curry  / USA Today)