John Hayden

Thirty-one penalty minutes in 20 games at eight and a half minutes a night, and 321 in 269 career games.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2016-17	CHI	12	1	3	4	+3	4	0	0	0	22	4.5	11:41
2017-18	CHI	47	4	9	13	-4	54	0	1	0	56	7.1	10:49
2018-19	CHI	54	3	2	5	-12	27	0	0	0	42	7.1	9:10
2019-20	NJD	43	3	1	4	-2	77	0	0	1	39	7.7	9:43
2020-21	ARI	29	2	3	5	-4	37	0	0	2	21	9.5	9:49
2021-22	BUF	55	2	2	4	-12	84	0	0	0	65	3.1	10:51
2022-23	SEA	7	2	0	2	+2	7	0	0	0	9	22.2	7:55
2023-24	SEA	2	0	0	0	-1	0	0	0	0	1	0.0	6:44
2024-25	SEA	20	1	1	2	0	31	0	0	0	20	5.0	8:31
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	269	18	21	39	-30	321	0	1	3	275	6.6	9:58

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

1 goal and 1 assist in 20 games — 2 points at 8:31 a night, with 31 penalty minutes.

There is no five-on-five sample worth reporting and the penalty minutes are the point. A thirteenth forward on a club that finished 27th, dressed on the nights the coach expected a hard one.

The Finesse Game

20 shot attempts in 20 games and 1 goal. 39 points in 269 career NHL games is the whole offensive record.

The puck skills are below NHL standard and the deployment says so. He is not on the ice in any situation where the puck is expected to reach him.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 223 and this is the entire player. He hits extremely hard, he fights, and he is not moved from in front of a net.

31 penalty minutes in 20 games, and 321 in 269 career games. He crosses the line deliberately and that is the job.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick of Chicago in 2013 out of Yale, and nine NHL seasons on from that across five organisations, most of it in the American League.

He is 30. The role is disappearing from the league and there are still clubs that want one.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He hits extremely hard, he fights, and he is not moved from in front of a net.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He hits extremely hard, he fights, and he is not moved from in front of a net.”
takes-libertiesa strength· crosses the line and knows where it is
“He crosses the line deliberately and that is the job.”

The numbers underneath

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 20 games

Top speed: 21.9 mph; 33rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.50 a game
Distance: 1.43 miles a game
Hardest shot: 75.5 mph; 10th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 158 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

30 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 27% from beyond forty.