NHL Rumors: Big Development On Kevin Hayes' NHL Future
Josh Yohe of The Athletic confirmed the organization has no plans to offer the 34-year-old center a new contract.
Yohe framed it as: Hayes was a good soldier during his time in Pittsburgh, but his lack of foot speed made cracking the lineup a challenge, and he will not return next season.
The decision is one of the easier ones Kyle Dubas faces this offseason, which is saying something given the volume of free agent decisions he has in front of him.
Hayes arrived in Pittsburgh two summers ago from the St. Louis Blues in a cap-dump deal that included a second-round pick to sweeten the arrangement, with the Blues looking to shed the final two years of the seven-year, $50 million contract he signed with Philadelphia as a pending free agent in 2019.
The Flyers retained half his cap hit when they moved him to St. Louis in 2023, which left Pittsburgh paying a prorated $3.57 million for a player whose best hockey was clearly several years behind him.
What the Numbers Looked Like
Even by the reduced standards of a depth veteran playing on a discount, Hayes struggled to contribute this season.
Upper-body issues cost him the first month of the year. He then missed a significant stretch in March with another injury.
In between those absences, he was still largely a healthy scratch, appearing in just 28 games total with only seven of those coming after Christmas.
Josh Yohe: Re Penguins: They are not expected to bring back UFA Kevin Hayes - The Athletic (5/5)
— NHL Rumour Report (@NHLRumourReport) May 10, 2026
He finished with four goals and eight points, a 0.29 points per game rate that was the lowest of his 12 NHL seasons by a meaningful margin.
His faceoff winning percentage dropped to 40.3 percent, a sharp decline from the 52.2 percent he posted the previous year.
The Penguins were 7-14-7 in games Hayes played, a record that is not entirely his fault but does reflect how rarely his best nights coincided with Pittsburgh's best nights.
His defensive game, which had been quietly eroding for years before Philadelphia moved him in 2023, offered little compensating value as the offense dried up.
He had 54 points in that final Flyers season.
Why the Penguins Are Moving On
Dubas has already re-signed Connor Dewar to a two-year extension at $2.25 million per year and brought back Ilya Solovyov on a one-year deal, with Egor Chinakhov's restricted free agency and Malkin's situation representing the more pressing contract conversations.
Entry-level players Benjamin Kindel and Rutger McGroarty figure to lock up two more spots.
The Pittsburgh Penguins aren’t expected to bring back Kevin Hayes. Per, Josh Yohe.
— The Mug NHL (@TheMugNHL) May 10, 2026
Tristan Broz, Ville Koivunen, and 2025 first-rounder Bill Zonnon will all be in training camp competing for bottom-six roles alongside Avery Hayes as a potential internal candidate for a press-box depth spot.
The internal pipeline has depth at exactly the positions where Kevin Hayes had been plugged in.
For a team with $45.8 million in projected cap space trying to get younger while remaining competitive, spending any of it on a 34-year-old veteran who appeared in 28 games and posted career-low production across every notable category is not a move that makes much sense.
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