Avery Hayes’ first NHL goal was gorgeous.
His second was …
… I mean, what’s another word for gorgeous?
He backhands the puck into the Buffalo zone, beats everyone to it as if that’d been the plan all along, bangs big Mattias Samuelsson into the end boards, bullies even bigger Tage Thompson in the corner, beelines to the net, then buries Anthony Mantha’s feed by Alex Lyon glove, as top-shelf as it gets.
Not going to lie here: It’s been a couple hours since the Penguins carved up the Sabres, 5-2, tonight here at KeyBank Center on Hayes’ historic outburst in becoming the seventh player in the NHL’s 107-year history to score more than once in the first period of his debut, the third in franchise history to score twice in the full debut along with Robbie Brown in 1987 and Jake Guentzel in 2016 … and I’m still shaking my head as I was when witnessing both sequences.
Because it wasn’t the what. It was the how.
It was more, too.
“It was unbelievable,” Dan Muse would say with a smile and headshake afterward, as if he was that rare hockey person applying that term with its dictionary-defined intent. “Especially with the day that he’s had. He woke up this morning with not a thought of playing a game in the NHL, to travel the way he did, to score the way he did, the first one, the second one, another beautiful one … the whole game, he was awesome.”
Bit of a breath there.
“Yeah, special day for him.”
Not even management could know Hayes would’ve been needed. The morning skate on this day would see Blake Lizotte ruled out because his wife was expecting the couple’s first child, Noel Acciari deemed iffy because he’d fallen ill and, within the skate itself, Rickard Rakell left the session due to a lower-body injury. None of the three would be able to play.
Two extra forwards were on hand, but a very rare third extra would be needed. So, because Lizotte and Acciari make up the Penguins’ fiery fourth line, it’d be Hayes, who’s fit that brand his whole hockey life, getting the 11 a.m. call in Wilkes-Barre. A five-hour drive away. And for his parents and other family and friends way out in Michigan, who he’d then contact, that much farther.
He packed up, and off he went, driven by a team employee.
“It was fine,” he’d recall here after the game. “I was able to sleep for a bit of it. And I didn’t have much time to think about the game which, honestly, was pretty nice. It wasn’t too stressful.”
He was even mindful enough to remember the team’s dress code so, upon arrival near the arena, he somehow strapped on his suit while in the parking lot.
And from that, never mind never having been drafted, never mind being a bit of a late bloomer at 23, never mind having produced a modest 74 points over parts of three AHL seasons, he pulls off a living, breathing Hallmark holiday movie?
I had to ask:
“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not that easy,” he’d reply to my tongue-in-cheek question. “It’s the hardest league in the world for a reason. I was just able to get a couple of lucky bounces early.”