The prospect tournaments wrapping up this week can be a hard place for the untrained eye to do true talent evaluations. There’s a wide range of skill and a wide range of ages.

When a 6-foot-3, 22-year-old forward looks good out there -- like New York Rangers forward Kevin Hayes looked at the Red Wings prospect tournament in Traverse City, Michigan -- those factors have to be weighed. It’s better to depend on veteran talent evaluators who are looking less at the production and more at the process.

One widely respected talent evaluator left the tournament impressed with what he saw in Hayes.

“He looks like a player,” he said. “Free guys are hard to get. That’s a guy 29 other teams would have been happy to get.”

They had their chance.

When the NHL and the NHLPA agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement to end the last lockout, one of the rules some general managers hoped to see amended survived.