When the Philadelphia Flyers signed Kevin Hayes to a seven-year, $50-million contract in the summer of 2019, many questions were raised and not a whole lot were answered until we were able to see him actually play on the ice.
It appeared like massive amount of commitment to someone that has just been a decent top-six player on terrible teams for the majority of his career. A contract that is in that weird range of “not elite but he can do the job”, “it’s the cost of free agency”, and “they didn’t give up any assets but cap space,” that you can hear your local bar patrons defend the player when they’re in a scoring slump; Hayes appeared to be well worth it though last season.