When the 2021-22 season ended, Kevin Hayes had far bigger concerns than adapting to a tough new head coach.

As a result of a nagging core muscle injury, Hayes felt his NHL career was in jeopardy.

“I was at a point last year where I accepted that this is probably who I am as a hockey player. I’m not going to be able to skate for that many more years,” he said.

Advertisement

Hayes’ days as a key contributor to the Philadelphia Flyers appeared over, in spite of the four years remaining on his seven-year, $50 million contract signed in 2019. But after lots of soul-searching, numerous long phone calls with his parents and, most importantly, a third and final surgical procedure which identified and resolved the lingering infection that had yet to clear up and was causing his continued discomfort, Hayes made real progress. He closed out the season with 24 points in 28 games and his health only improved in the following months.

“Ultimately, this summer, things turned around,” Hayes said Monday with clear relief in his voice. If anything, his early-season scoring — 27 points in 26 games — proves it. Hayes is back.

So in the wake of successfully coming out the other side from a potentially career-threatening injury, winning over even a noted taskmaster like John Tortorella should be a relative snap, right?

The reality has been a bit more complicated.

In many ways, Hayes is having the best start of his nine-year NHL career.

“He’s provided a ton of offense for us,” Flyers alternate captain Scott Laughton said. “We have a pretty tough time scoring goals and things like that. He’s had some timely goals for us. He just finds a way. He’s such a good offensive player, big guy (who) holds onto pucks and can fight guys off.”

Laughton — the only player on the club wearing a leadership letter at the moment — isn’t kidding, in multiple regards. Ravaged by injury, the Flyers entered Tuesday’s games ranked 28th in the NHL in goals scored. Given the extended absences of Sean Couturier, Cam Atkinson, Travis Konecny, James van Riemsdyk and even Laughton himself, the Flyers have been missing most of their (already underwhelming) offensive firepower, leaving Hayes as one of the few proven veteran scoring threats in the lineup most games.

Advertisement

Hayes — despite often being asked to play alongside inexperienced or rookie linemates due to the injuries — has stepped up to meet the challenge with strong scoring production.

“I have a ton of belief in my offensive ability,” Hayes said. “I’ve been an offensive guy my whole career before I got to the NHL, and to be honest, I was always ending every season being like, ‘I can’t believe I only have this amount of points.’ I thought I generated a lot more. Maybe this year, they’re just going in.”

Hayes, for all his skill, has yet to crack 60 points in a single NHL season; in fact, he’s only broken the 50-point mark once. So far in 2022-23, he’s on pace for 85 — which would easily be a career high.

Unsurprisingly, Tortorella has been more than satisfied with Hayes’ offense in his first few months coaching the 30-year-old forward.

“He’s been so strong on the puck offensively,” Tortorella said. “He’s a good offensive player. We all know that. I think he has really stepped up on holding onto pucks offensively, and he’s trying away from the puck.”

That’s a lot of positivity — preceding a not-so-veiled challenge from the head coach. Hayes’ career-best offensive start isn’t enough. Tortorella wants more.

In his very first media availability as Flyers head coach — done via video call from his living room in June — Tortorella made it very clear that he shared Hayes’ belief that he was a player who was leaving value on the table.

In short, six months ago, Tortorella told everyone exactly how he planned to handle Hayes. It wasn’t going to be with kid gloves.

“Kevin is one I’m anxious to work with because I think there’s more there. I think he’s a huge piece of the puzzle up the middle of the ice for this organization,” Tortorella said. “I want to try to help him, because if I can help him and make him understand we’re going to try to get him to another level, what does he do for the Flyers organization up the middle of the ice? I’ve watched from afar and there’s more there. It’s my responsibility to try and get that out of him.”

Advertisement

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, probably more than any other player on the team, Tortorella has prodded and publicly challenged Hayes — to the point where he’s no longer even at his natural position of center.

Hayes was part of Tortorella’s first notable in-game disciplinary action with the Flyers, when he chose to sit both Hayes and Konecny for the third period of the club’s Oct. 23 game against the San Jose Sharks. Konecny sought out Tortorella in the wake of the benching, and after a give-and-take conversation, Konecny responded four days later with a dominant first-period showing against Florida that quickly put him back in the coach’s good graces.

That hasn’t been the case with Hayes, particularly over the past few weeks.

The first signs of public dissatisfaction came on Nov. 19 versus Montreal. First, Hayes was dropped to Line 3, centering Patrick Brown (a 2021 waiver claim) and Max Willman (a recent AHL call-up). Then, after a 13-second shift with 1:10 remaining and the Flyers nursing a one-goal edge over the Canadiens, Tortorella left Hayes on the bench after a Montreal timeout, instead going with rookie Noah Cates, Brown and role player Zack MacEwen as the forwards entrusted with closing out the victory.

“I mean, you saw the guys I had out on the ice at the end. That kind of spells it out for you,” he said when asked if he needed more leadership from the Flyers’ veterans. “I don’t need to answer that question, you can just tell by the people I’m putting on the ice.”

And in case anyone missed that not-so-subtle hint, Tortorella hammered it home two days later when Hayes — for the first time in years — was moved over to wing on a line with Cates. Tortorella’s explanation?

“I want to continue to develop Catesy as a center,” he said. “I think Catesy is more responsible down low defensively (than Hayes).”

Advertisement

Realize what Tortorella was saying here: a 23-year-old rookie with just 35 NHL games to his credit, who largely played left wing in college and is still in the process of mastering the finer point of the center position, is superior defensively down low to Hayes, a 30-year old, nine-year NHL veteran who spent almost all of his 572 regular season games to that point in middle.

Yes, Tortorella moved Hayes back to center for the next game in Washington. But three nights later, he was back on the wing, where he remains.

The “huge piece of the puzzle up the middle of the ice” for the Flyers is — at least for now — a winger.

Both Tortorella and Hayes have publicly denied that the two are strongly at odds.

“I think the media is making his challenges towards me a bigger thing than they actually are,” Hayes told The Athletic on Monday. “I’m not (criticizing) you guys, but it allows you guys to write some stuff.”

And on Tortorella’s part, even while making his discontent with elements of Hayes’ game known, he’s praised Hayes the person and has cited his offensive skills.

“Everybody thinks Kevin’s in the doghouse. Kevin isn’t in the doghouse,” Tortorella said after the team’s 3-1 victory over the Islanders on Nov. 29. “Kevin needs to learn to play the right way, and I think he’s trying to do that.”

That said, Hayes acknowledged that the perception that the two have butted heads at times so far is real, even as he downplayed its significance.

“There’s no problem between me and Torts,” Hayes said. “He’s benched me this season, he’s yelled at me in the locker room. We’ve had good conversations. We’ve had bad conversations. It’s pretty much been the same with every single coach I’ve had. There’s no bad blood there.”

But Tortorella has taken one drastic, novel coaching step in moving Hayes to the wing. And it’s for a very simple, straightforward reason: his belief that Hayes’ defense at center has been nowhere near good enough.

Advertisement

While hockey has moved toward more fluid positional strategies in recent years, the center continues to receive the most defensive responsibilities. Generally speaking, he’s the “low forward” in the defensive zone, helping the defensemen to protect the net front and low slot, and also serving as the primary up-the-middle outlet on breakouts. Wingers, on the other hand, tend to be positioned higher in the defensive zone, along the boards and closer to the blue line.

That’s where Tortorella believes Hayes is falling short. Since the start of the season — but especially as the schedule has gotten busier — the Flyers’ coaching staff has relied upon group tape studies as a teaching tool. Despite his gaudy offensive totals, Hayes’ name was coming up quite a bit in those meetings run by Tortorella when the topic turned to defensive zone responsibilities, and not in a positive way.

“Kevin’s on the right wing because there’s been struggles with him in low coverage in our end zone, so I put him on right wing,” Tortorella said on Nov. 28.

“I think he’s in a better spot playing wing where he just doesn’t get as many opportunities as far as low coverage where there’s some struggles in his game,” Tortorella elaborated a day later. “So, we’re trying — a team that’s starving for offense — I’m trying to take the pressure off of him defensively, and not being worried about all those types of situations low and let him work on the other part of his game.”

Tortorella doesn’t appear to be wrong in his evaluation of Hayes’ defensive work in 2022-23, either.

The Flyers in general and Tortorella in particular don’t use public advanced statistics to evaluate their players. But as Tortorella acknowledged earlier this season, he does pay attention to scoring chances, both created and allowed, when judging individuals. The Flyers certainly aren’t going to reveal their specific methodology in terms of what they grade as a scoring chance but we can use a public expected goal model — essentially a weighted scoring chance model — to do our best to evaluate Hayes’ defensive play absent that proprietary information.

And let’s just say Hayes isn’t grading out well thus far by public data, either. Using Evolving-Hockey’s RAPM model to isolate defensive impact, Hayes holds a +0.184 impact on expected goals against at even strength — that’s second-worst on the Flyers ahead of only Tony DeAngelo, and in the 2.6 percentile among NHL forwards with at least 100 minutes played.

Advertisement

In other words, Torts just might have a point here.

Given that the Flyers already lack offensive firepower — and add in the deluge of recent injuries up front — and a remedial move like scratching Hayes for his defensive issues would have been ill-advised. So instead, Tortorella chose to move Hayes from center while keeping him in the lineup.

“I don’t know if that’s the plan for the future,” Hayes said when asked if he’s expecting to stay on the wing. “Who knows?”

Not even Tortorella, apparently. His decision appears to be more of a temporary solution to an issue that still needs to be resolved.

“I think there are bad habits there that are tough to change right now at this stage of his career,” Tortorella said. “I’ve tried. Tough to change. So we’re going to go this way. Do we completely forget about him as a center? I don’t know. I’ve got to wait and see which road we’re at, at that point in time and we have to make those decisions.”

That’s not the only decision Tortorella is making in 2022-23.

He’s also in the process of determining which players he believes are part of his long-term plan for the Flyers.

“I’m excited about a lot of different things with players,” he said last month. “But I’m also looking at some things that, I just don’t think you’re going to be a big part of this when we move forward. Or at least they can’t be if we’re going to move forward.”

Given that Hayes leads the Flyers in scoring — and has three more seasons on a contract with a $7.14 million cap hit and partial no-trade protection — he would seem to be a logical choice to be a “big part of this” beyond 2022-23. But don’t forget that in June, Tortorella envisioned him as a big piece of the puzzle down the middle. And now, he’s playing wing, in large part due to perceived habits at center that could be very hard for a 30-year-old to break.

Advertisement

“I don’t think he realizes some of the mistakes that he does make, because it’s just been that way,” Tortorella said. “And that’s not a criticism on other coaches that coached him, it’s just tough … when you get to that intersection, and when a player starts getting bad habits, (if) you don’t get them at a young age, it’s hard to get him back to that intersection, and try to get him to take that left turn instead of right.

If Hayes can’t break those habits, might Tortorella decide that Hayes can’t be a part of the team if it’s going to “move forward,” as he put it?

The good news for Hayes? Tortorella, as expected, appears to appreciate Hayes’ attitude.

“Kevin, he knows. Kevin’s trying. This isn’t a player that’s stubborn,” Tortorella said. “He cares, and is trying to be the best he can be.”

General manager Chuck Fletcher also threw cold water on the idea that Tortorella is anywhere close to giving up on Hayes.

“He’s never been an elite defensive player. We knew that when we got him,” Fletcher said. “And Torts loves him. But there’s certain things that he does in the game that maybe Torts doesn’t love. He wants more from him. So he’s just trying to put Kevin in a position to succeed.”

The perception that Tortorella is already “out” on Hayes, in Fletcher’s mind, is largely driven by Tortorella’s unique level of candor with the media.

“Torts is brutally honest with you guys,” Fletcher said. “I think he tries to give you guys the information you need. But when he makes a criticism of a player, it’s not that he doesn’t like him. He just maybe doesn’t like what he did that particular game or that shift or a certain aspect of it, and he’s demanding more of these guys.”

Hayes, publicly and privately, appears to be responding in a productive manner to the criticism he’s received in the midst of his stellar offensive start.

Advertisement

“Everyone thinks that we have a bad relationship,” Hayes said. “I’m not really a rah-rah guy who screams and yells. I think our personalities are a little bit different, and I think people look at that as a problem. I have the utmost respect for his decisions. I think he respects me as a player, and he probably wants me to be better defensively. I’m trying. Everything he’s asking me to do, I’m trying to do it.”

“Hayesy moves to wing for the first time probably in his career, doesn’t say a peep and just plays,” Laughton said. “Tells you the type of guy he is, and what it does for our locker room.”

Tortorella also realizes that while he can make recommendations to the GM about which players he wants and doesn’t want, creating his ideal roster — whether it includes Hayes or not — isn’t going to happen overnight, just due to the realities of the salary cap. He said as much when asked last week how he would react if he determined a player with an onerous, potentially untradeable contract simply didn’t fit what he was trying to build.

“It’s a great question, Charlie, because a coach would say, ‘I don’t like this guy, that guy, that guy.’ But you just don’t get them out,” he said. “It just doesn’t happen that way. It’s not like football where you can cut them on a Monday and they’re gone.

“And as a coach, I know that. But you still have to initiate those conversations to the general manager, so you can continue to have those conversations and maybe that can be maneuvered somewhere along the way. It may not be this year, next year, it could be the following year. And I do think that’s where we’re at.”

In other words, if Hayes hasn’t yet, he’s likely going to have a lot more time to try to win Tortorella over. And Tortorella certainly hasn’t shut the door in that regard.

“(It’s) very difficult (to break habits in a veteran player). But I think he’s worth it,” Tortorella said. “All the coaches are trying to help him and I think he’s trying to help himself.”

Through the position switch and stern treatment from Tortorella, Hayes has been playing the role of the good subordinate, toiling away behind closed doors and refusing to complain publicly.

Advertisement

Don’t forget that this is a player who chose to return for the final two months of a lost Flyers season after a third surgical procedure rather than take the safe route and shut it down, in large part because he felt that the team’s highest-paid player had an obligation to help the club on the ice if he was physically able to do so.

That mentality earned him a Masterton Trophy nomination and second place in the voting for the award last season. It’s also allowing him to put up career-best offensive numbers while trying to please a particularly demanding coach on the other side of the ice.

“I don’t (shy) away from any challenge, honestly. It’s just who I am as a person,” Hayes said.

Winning over Tortorella is just yet another challenge to be tackled and overcome.

“Torts is an honest guy who attacks problems head-on. If you’re not willing to accept criticism and be a man about it, you’re probably not going to be successful under him,” Hayes said.

Tortorella has been satisfied with Hayes’ work since the position change — not just offensively, but also in the details of his game that just might eventually earn him a return back to the middle.

“Right now, I really like what’s happening there,” Tortorella said Monday. “Because I also think it releases him, and you can see his offense just grow. (He) doesn’t have to play a full 200-foot game, (he’s) inside the blue line covering his point, weakside (or) whatever it may be. But I think it allows him to really work at his strengths. But I also see that he’s concentrating. Certainly not mistake-free. But I think he realizes that has to be part of his game.”

As for Hayes, he’s just happy to be playing hockey. He’s scoring again and working to solidify his long-term place the Flyers, even if that means achieving the difficult task of earning Tortorella’s full-fledged trust.

Advertisement

“It’s just nice waking up in the morning and being able to get out of bed. That wasn’t the case last year. So that’s a bonus,” he said. “I never thought I’d feel normal again. And I feel great.”

Next up? Checking enough of his coach’s boxes to return to his normal position as well.

(Photo: Eric Hartline / USA Today)