This day is a whirlwind for any player, but particularly for Hayes, as it was totally unexpected. It began with Hayes going to the rink in Wilkes-Barre for an optional practice, where he stayed off the ice and got a workout in.<\/p>\n
Around 10:45 AM, WBS manager of team operations Derek Avery got a call from Penguins Director of Hockey Operations and Legal Affairs Vukie Mpofu and Head Coach Dan Muse. Pittsburgh had players dealing with injury (Rickard Rakell) and illness (Noel Acciari), so they were calling up Hayes in case they both couldn\u2019t go. They wanted Derek to put Hayes on the phone to give him the news, as he didn\u2019t have his device with him in the training room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just went in there, he was in the middle of a stretch,\u201d Derek said. \u201cTrying to play it cool, but it\u2019s like, let’s get out of here as quick as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
There weren\u2019t great options when it came to getting Hayes to Buffalo on short notice. It would have been difficult to get a car service there quick enough. If they wanted to fly, it would have to be out of New York, which isn\u2019t easy. Ultimately, it was decided that Derek would drive Hayes in his own vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou limit your risk as much as you possibly can. And then it was just hold off, hold off until it’s confirmed,\u201d Derek said. \u201cOnce we hit 11:30, it became a reality. Then it was just all hands on deck. Got his equipment, said his goodbyes quick, got the meal that was prepared by our chefs in Wilkes in a to-go container, and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
They got in the car and quickly stopped at Hayes\u2019 place, where he grabbed a suit and his toothbrush, and then Derek\u2019s. From there, they began the 4.5-hour trek to Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Paul got a call from Penguins director of team services Jason Seidling around noon. Avery\u2019s debut wasn\u2019t official at that point, as they were going to wait and see if Acciari was well enough to play. \u201cBut when I talked to Jason, he said, we\u2019re still going to get you guys there just in case he does play. We don\u2019t want you to miss it,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the Westland, Michigan natives live just 10 minutes from the Detroit Metro Airport. So, like the boys, they quickly packed up and headed out to catch their flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking about (his journey) the whole plane ride here, it just brought me back to when he was little,\u201d Mandy said. \u201cTying his skates, it\u2019s just like it was yesterday,\u201d Paul said. \u201cIt went by so fast. It doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s been that long.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This day is a whirlwind for any player, but particularly for Hayes, as it was totally unexpected. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-457230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}