*Shrugs
He was injured last year. the year prior, he only had 14 points in the first 47 games. Then he started to put things together and had 14 goals and 29 points in the last 35 games. Great? no, but solid, and he started winning tons and tons of faceoffs and playing very good two way hockey.
His projection is two way 2nd or 3rd line Center, so its not like 2.65 million is breaking banks
Some of that was probably inflated a bit by who he was playing with, but point still remains...he's certainly a lot more than a "10pt player" as was spouted off.
Utah are still pretty starved for Centers too. Who knows where exactly he lands, but i'd imagine he'll get some looks and opportunities to rotate through the Top-6 with good, creative "offensive catalyst" wingers he needs to be productive.
He's never really struck me as any kind of offensive "play driver" and i doubt that's ever going to change. But if he's healthy and can pick up where he left off the year prior, $2.65M for a couple years is plenty fine value for a decent 2-way Middle-6 Center, even if he's more of a "facilitator" than anything else. Especially for a Utah team that isn't exactly hurting for cap space to burn.
If he just bounces back to something like ~15-20G - 40Pt range that he notched the year before his last injury shortened campaign, that's very decent value @ $2.65M. I don't see any way he picks up the kind of pace he ended that season on, unless he's playing with Keller/Schmaltz...but that's fine. That sort of pace would be enormous surplus value.
Seems like he's a player who suffers from a couple of things compounding one another.
1) The label of "overdrafted"...which he'll probably never overcome. It was a reach on a potential 2-way Top-6 Center...which isn't even a bad thing to "reach" on. Plus, look at the rest of that draft and guys taken after him. Littered with downright total busts. Guys like Zadina, Boqvist, Kravtsov, Wahlstrom. Even just ahead of him, the Habs reach on Kotkaniemi...and i don't think a healthy Hayton is particularly any worse than him. It just looks bad because they had defencemen like Hughes/Bouchard/Dobson all sitting there ripe for the taking, and those were all very plausible picks at the time as well.
2) Playing for the Yotes. Nobody cares, nobody watched them or paid attention to anything other than Keller lighting it up basically. So a lot of people didn't get to see Hayton rounding into at least a very serviceable middle-6 Center.
But anyway...seems like a reasonable deal given all the circumstances. Close enough to "fair value" if he gets back to "status quo". With some pretty significant potential upside if he gets back to progressing in the right direction again.