Veteran NHLer Kevin Hayes signs one-year contract in KHL
Longtime NHL center Kevin Hayes has signed a one-year contract with KHL club Ak Bars Kazan, the league announced on its English-language social media channels Tuesday.
Hayes, 34, spent the 2025-26 season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, collecting four goals and eight points in 28 games while primarily being used as a reserve forward. The Dorchester, Mass. product did not appear in the 2026 playoffs with the club.
With Ak Bars, Hayes will likely get a chance to play significant minutes alongside fellow ex-NHLers Grigori Denisenko, Sasha Chmelevski, and Kirill Semyonov. Kazan reached the Gagarin Cup Final in 2026, ultimately falling to Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in six games.
A first-round pick (No. 24 overall) of the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2010 NHL Draft, Hayes never played for his draft club. He spent four seasons at Boston College, playing primarily on a line with wingers Johnny Gaudreau and Bill Arnold, before signing with the New York Rangers as a free agent in 2014.
Hayes spent parts of five seasons on Broadway, eclipsing 35 points each year but never quite living up to his billing as a prized collegiate signing. In the midst of the 2018-19 campaign, one of his strongest in the NHL, the Rangers sent Hayes to the Winnipeg Jets as a trade deadline rental.
As an unrestricted free agent from the Jets in 2019, Hayes signed a massive seven-year contract with the Philadelphia Flyers. He had an up-and-down tenure in Philly, setting a career high with 54 points in 81 games with the Flyers in 2022-23 but also recording a career-worst -22 rating that year while ending up at odds with head coach John Tortorella. The Flyers traded Hayes to the St. Louis Blues after the season; he spent just one year there before the Blues paid a second-round pick to move his contract to Pittsburgh.
In 805 career games over parts of 12 NHL seasons, Hayes collected 185 goals, 445 points, and 233 penalty minutes. The 6’3″ center added eight goals and 26 points in 56 playoff games with the Rangers, Jets, and Flyers.
