Barrett Hayton Continues to Be Utah’s Streakiest Player

This recent hot stretch is well overdue for Hayton. He has led the Utah Hockey Club in expected goals throughout the season and has 14 more high-danger scoring chances than any other player on the team. He also has phenomenal on-ice stats due to his reliability on the defensive end. Despite his subpar production, it is nice to see him finally be rewarded for his highly underrated play this season.

Hayton’s Roller Coaster Season

The Arizona Coyotes drafted Hayton with the fifth pick in the first round of the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. Before the draft, Hayton was drawing comparisons to Patrice Bergeron, which is exceptionally high praise considering Bergeron is one of the best two-way centers ever to play the game.

Since then, Hayton has shown that he can live up to these comparisons, at least defensively. This season, while he is on the ice for Utah at five-on-five, the team controls 56.93% of the shot attempts, 55.27% of the shots, 56.83% of the scoring chances, 59.91% of the high-danger chances, 58.82% of the goals and 57.7% of the expected goals.

However, Hayton has not yet lived up to the offensive side of his draft projection and is starting to draw a label of being inconsistent on the offensive end. In 2022-23, he set his career high in points of 42 with the Coyotes, and much of his 2023-24 campaign was spoiled due to injury. But going into his first year in Utah, many speculated that he would produce near his career highs if not take another step forward.

While Hayton is not too far off of his career-high 42 points, being on a 35-point 82-game pace, seeing him below these numbers isn’t very reassuring, considering 14 of his 26 points have come in 11 of Utah’s games this season. In Utah’s first six games of the season, he had four goals and four points, and in their most recent five, he has four goals and two assists.

This means Hayton is averaging 1.27 points per game throughout these 11 games, or 22% of the season thus far, but for the other 38 games or 78% of the season, he is only averaging 0.31 points per game. In addition, he has 51 days this season where he went without a goal and only had two primary points over that stretch.

In the past, I chalked up many of Hayton’s inconsistencies to poor puck luck. However, now 49 games into the season, with him having a shooting percentage above 15% and his goal total (12) creeping closer to his expected goal total (14.61), it is harder to give him this pass.

Hayton will not average over a point per game, and that wouldn’t be a realistic expectation based on what we have seen from him throughout his career. But he has shown flashes of offensive brilliance this season and ranks among the top 30 skaters in high-danger chances, which makes his lack of offense at times so frustrating.

Throughout the back half of the season, Utah will need to see a far more consistent Hayton on the offensive side if they want to move forward with him as a key player in their top six. But, if he continues to be inconsistent, Utah may have to understand that he will not be the impact player they drafted him to be but rather an excellent third-line center, which was his projected floor when he was drafted.