I'm not sure the Kevin Hayes contract is exactly a great selling point for Turris either. I mean, I would be at least a little disappointed if I had either one of them on those contracts as my #2 center. They are both players who I think have some holes in their game and really need a bit of utilization-coddling to get the most out of them.
But sometimes teams do get that stuck. Nashville certainly was when we made the trade to get Turris. Our center ice position was an absolute wasteland and Poile had to take some extreme measures to try to fix it - starting with the Johansen trade, the Bonino signing, the Turris trade. He fixed it. And then realized it still wasn't quite good enough to get the team over the hump, so he had to sign Duchene too to put the final improvement in place.
Hayes and Turris are "adequate" filler players I'd say. Sometimes you need them, and they'll do just fine in a pinch. They can play 2C without being embarrassing. But if you have them, you'll always be left wanting just a little more than what they can do. So having them on those big contracts eventually becomes a bit of a regret - or at least you HOPE it does, because that means your team finally did get somebody better. That's basically where Nashville is at now. We finally got somebody better. It would have been nice to have Turris for, say, 3 years at that $6M. 6 years was too much. I won't be surprised if it doesn't turn out similarly for Hayes.
But on the bright side for any prospective Turris shoppers... some of that term is already getting used up by the Preds already. If you're in the spot we were in of needing that "adequate" 2C filler, you can have him now with just 4 years left, instead of going out and signing the next guy like them to a 6- or 7-year term!
