Inside the NHL
Call Kraken veteran forward hopeful John Hayden anything you want — and some have dared try — but don’t call him one-dimensional.
The fact Hayden went to Yale University, studied political science there while captaining the hockey team and graduated by completing courses after reaching the NHL is just one giveaway there’s more than a stick, helmet and gloves at play here. Gloves, mind you, that Hayden tends to drop more than the average NHL player in a bid to punch the helmet off any opponent bent on challenging him.
Yes, Hayden is what sort of passes for an NHL “enforcer” these days — which is nothing like it used to be in the 1980s and 1990s, when guys with that ominous tag were expected to fight every game, often multiple times, while doing little else. Now, with NHL fighting having massively declined even as the need to send occasional “messages” to opponents remains, a guy that can deliver shots at the net as well as to the chin is becoming an understated, if not lost, hockey art.
“My goal would be to never be one-dimensional,” said Hayden, who’d appeared in 240 NHL games over parts of six seasons with Chicago, New Jersey, Arizona and Buffalo before the Kraken signed him this summer to a one-year, two-way deal worth $750,000 if he can make their club. “And to try to bring a Swiss Army Knife mentality every year. Both by playing different roles and being able to play up and down lineups. And then also just adding things to my game.
“I know what I’m capable of,” he added. ‘I’ve just got to compete, and then different facets of my game start to show up.”
Those facets, particularly the hard-grinding parts while also being able to handle himself, are why the Kraken are taking a long preseason look at Chicago native Hayden for a roster spot. Though they have 6-foot-7, 255-pound Jamie Oleksiak as a more than capable fighter, losing arguably their best defenseman for five minutes every time somebody takes liberties with a Kraken player isn’t a recipe for winning.
In Hayden’s case, he’s built a solid reputation as a 6-3, 227-pound centerman who can help NHL teams on checking lines by battling for loose pucks and maintaining possession. And if an opponent needs a few fistfuls of encouragement to avoid taking cheap shots at Kraken players, well, any team would rather have a fourth-liner serve the fighting major than a top defenseman.
Hayden helped his cause last week at Vancouver, engaging in two first-period fights after the Canucks took an aggressive run at Kraken defenseman Michal Kempny that put him out of the game.
Kraken players were frequently tested by hard-hitting opponents last season and didn’t always aggressively respond, such as in Los Angeles last March after leading scorer Jared McCann was flung defenselessly into the boards by towering Kings forward Quinton Byfield. By responding against the Canucks, Hayden wasn’t just exacting payback for the hit on Kempny. He was sending a deterrent message to the Canucks and other teams that there will be a price to pay for going after Kraken players.
HockeyFights.com credits Hayden with only 22 career fights in the regular season — one in every 10 or so of his games. So the deterrence part is real as is there being more than fighting to Hayden’s game.
Of course, it helped that Hayden cemented last week’s Vancouver game by scoring the tying goal in a Kraken overtime win. The fights were expected, but the goal-scoring part was enough to prompt Kraken coach Dave Hakstol to praise Hayden afterward for “a hard job” well done.
Hayden has 15 goals and 20 assists during his career. He didn’t exactly grow up dreaming of becoming an NHL heavyweight champ and has no designations on such a title.
He’d been raised with a backyard rink in Denver, where a power game built on hard work and competitiveness became his foundation. By Hayden’s teens his father, Mark, had become a co-founder and CEO of both a sporting goods and a cosmetics company and moved their family to the upscale New York bedroom community of Greenwich, Connecticut.
Hayden would attend the private Brunswick School, a college preparatory academy. He accepted an offer to play junior-level hockey for the U.S. National Team Development Program in Michigan, finishing his final two years of high school there.
The experience of living on his own at that age is something Hayden felt would benefit him and expand his maturity beyond sports. That showed when he reached Yale, where his teammates gravitated toward him as a leader.
He scored 21 goals and notched 34 points in 33 games his final NCAA season. And though his 62 penalty minutes led the team, they were a result of his rugged style rather than his fists, because NCAA players wear full face shields and get ejected for fighting.
He’d had a few tussles in junior hockey with the U.S. development team. But it wasn’t until he got to summer development camp with the Chicago Blackhawks — a team that drafted him in the third round in 2013 before his four Yale seasons — where he’d be routinely forced into “tilts.”
And he became pretty adept at it.
He’d grown up around Canadian professional lacrosse player Geoff Snider — who’d played in Hayden’s hometown at the University of Denver and gained a reputation as one of that sport’s top fighters. Hayden also began training with Colton Orr, a 6-3, 222-pound winger who amassed 1,186 penalties over 477 career NHL games well before Hayden made it to hockey’s top league.
He describes both as having “teddy bear personalities” when not playing but “an elevated level of competitiveness” during games. And fighting, he said, is just a natural outgrowth of that competitiveness.
“Look, nowadays it’s such a fast, high-end skill game that you can’t be one-dimensional,” Hayden said. “But then from there, there’s accountability. Guys like to stand up for teammates, and different guys have different takes on it. But for me, I know that in physical games, highly competitive games, scraps just happen.”
And when they do, he won’t hesitate to stand up for himself or anyone needing help.