Kevin Hayes sees the simple narrative, but he makes it clear that it’s a little more complicated than that.
The Rangers’ talented 23-year-old forward looks back to his consecutive games as a healthy scratch at the turn of the New Year — along with the public tongue-lashing he got from coach Alain Vigneault — and understands how easy it is to portray that as the turning point of his season. Since returning to the lineup on Jan. 5, his game has been simpler, the turnovers have been limited, and he’s again become the reliable, big-bodied third-line center whom Vigneault remembers from Hayes’ rookie campaign last season, taken all the way to the Eastern Conference final.
So maybe it wasn’t quite as harsh as a wake-up call, but those two games spent watching in street clothes did bring perspective to the ultra-confident Hayes, and forced him to refocus on being an everyday contributor for his team.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘complacent,’ but you play however many games in a row, starting last year, and then all of a sudden, you’re not in the lineup,” Hayes told The Post on Wednesday morning before a Garden match against the defending Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks. “It’s obviously an ego check. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, I sat out, I’m going to start working hard.’ I was working hard before and things weren’t going my way.
“It’s the National Hockey League. You don’t question guys’ effort, in this locker room or in this league. You just have to kind of get back to basics and kind of re-evaluate what you’re doing to help the team. And that’s what I did.”
Vigneault’s verbal evisceration of Hayes came following a practice in Nashville on Dec. 29, when the coach questioned Hayes’ attitude and even said the organization as a whole might have “overestimated his possibilities.”
Last week, Vigneault reflected on that diatribe, saying he wished he had handled the situation differently and that Hayes is “a sensitive young man.” But as most coaches are wont to say, it was all part of “the process,” and Vigneault believes the recent uptick in Hayes’ game shows a bit of maturation.
“This is Kevin’s second year, and every player has to go through the process of development, understanding what it takes to be a professional on a day-in-day-out fashion,” Vigneault said Wednesday morning. “What he needs to do as far as getting himself ready to practice, getting himself ready to play, the nutrition, the conditioning. He’s just going through that and understanding that.
“He came in last year, expectations were not the same [as when] he comes in this year after a pretty good year [and] expectations are higher. So he had to work through that and learn to work through it. I do think the last little while here we’ve seen a better player, a more consistent player at both ends of the rink.”
It’s not lost on Hayes or Vigneault — or general manager Jeff Gorton, for that matter — how important he is to this team’s potential success the rest of the regular season and possibly into the playoffs. Centering Oscar Lindberg and Viktor Stalberg, the trio has combined for a formidable third line, a necessary cog behind the top two lines, centered by Derick Brassard and Derek Stepan.
“We have two elite centers, in Brass and Step, and I think if we have a third line that is contributing and helping the team more than hurting the team, then it’s very difficult to kind of prepare for a team like that,” Hayes said. “It makes the team as a whole much more difficult to play against when you have four lines that are a threat, especially three offensive lines that can score at any time in the game.”
Vigneault also likes that Hayes stands 6-foot-5 and can use his big body when needed.
“When he’s on top of his game, defending well, in the offensive zone, moving the puck well, making plays with his linemates, he wears the opposition down,” Vigneault said. “We need that from him.”