I mean, divorced from contract, most people don't think Hayes is a bad player, right? If he has one strength, it's his creativity with the puck. He's basically a 50 point, above average middle 6 puck carrying center. It's really not a stretch to say if you give him every last ounce of scoring usage on the team, at every strength, that he could stretch that a bit higher -- and Konecny and Farabee are the only top 6 players on the team. He's also rocking a nearly 18% shooting % at all strengths, which is top 10. That's probably going to normalize.
He could very well end up with a career year.......on a bad team, which would be partly why they're a bad team. And I can use the same logic applied to certain other players: Hayes is stat padding.
He's not stat padding b/c Torts would kill him.
That is, he's not neglecting defense (cherry picking, etc.) to pad his offensive stats.
He's just not a great defensive center. That didn't matter so much with a healthy Couts.
Now his stats may be "inflated" from where they'd be as the 2C, but not by much, he might play 1-2 minutes more a game at ES, which would increase his ES scoring by 7-15%. He'll also get a boost being on PP1. If Atkinson and JVR were healthy, he's have similar quality wings, even with a healthy Couts.
So if his norm as a 2C was 50 points, he may get 60-70 (5-10 at ES and another 10 or so from a bigger PP role).
It's one reason I look at 5x5 scoring per 60 when comparing players, total points scored can depend on usage.
