Lane Hutson has played a grand total of two regular-season games in the National Hockey League and there is already more buzz around this 20-year-old defenceman than there has been regarding any other rookie Canadien in years.
Noted hockey analyst Pierre McGuire has been singing the praises of Hutson for a couple of years now, based on what he’d seen of the young man when he was playing with Boston University. Just this week on TSN 690, McGuire suggested Hutson will eventually be a better power-play quarterback than Mike Matheson, who holds down that job with the Canadiens right now.
“I do think that Lane Hutson will eventually be the No. 1 power-play guy,” McGuire said on Mitch Melnick’s TSN 690 drive-home show. “I don’t think it’s going to happen right away, but I do think it will happen. I told Mitch Melnick this last year when Lane Hutson was still a second-year player at Boston University. But that being said, I do think there will be a replacement (of Matheson), but that’s not a knock on Mike. That’s just a reality of how pro sports works. Sometimes the starting quarterback gets replaced. Joe Montana got replaced. Joe Namath got replaced.”
Hutson was selected by the Canadiens in the second round of the 2022 draft, 62nd overall, and most believe the main reason he didn’t get snapped up earlier is because of his size. He’s now 5-foot-10 and 162 pounds, which is small for an NHL D-man. But the Canadiens might’ve got a steal with him given what we’ve seen so far (in to be fair a minute sample size of games).
He has an unreal ability to hold on to the puck and to keep it away from seasoned NHL guys. A good example of this was the magical moves he made in the final game of last season, only his second game in the NHL, when he danced around with the puck at the blue line against the Detroit Red Wings and managed to fire a shot at Detroit netminder James Reimer, which Juraj Slafkovsky tipped in for his 20th goal of the season. On that play, Hutson looked like he’d been playing in the league for years.
He also looked amazing in the Canadiens’ first exhibition game this season, Monday at the Bell Centre against the Philadelphia Flyers, a performance that nabbed him the honour of being named first star of the game. Oh, and last Saturday, in an intra-squad scrimmage, Hutson tossed off a just-incredible nearly-full-ice saucer pass that sent Emil Heineman in on a breakaway. That pass was quite literally the talk of the hockey world last weekend and you couldn’t be on social media without seeing the video.
By the end of the first week of exhibition games, the consensus is Hutson will be in the line-up come opening night Oct. 9 against the Toronto Maple Leafs and some are even beginning to talk quietly about how he might just be in the discussion for rookie of the year honours this season.
At McLean’s Pub on Thursday, fans had nothing bad to say about the young man from Holland, Mich.
“He’s a special player, the kind of defenceman we haven’t seen in Montreal in a very long time,” said John Abbott College commerce student Owen Rhodes, who was at McLean’s to watch the Habs and Leafs exhibition game Thursday. “He’s what the future of hockey is, a mobile defenceman. It’s what the game is going towards and every team needs one if they want to build a good team. In today’s game, I think it’s so fast that size doesn’t really matter. If you’re quick on your feet, you can avoid checks. We see it with (Cole) Caufield. We see it with other small players. I don’t think it’s a problem. As long as you pair him with a bigger defenceman, he’ll be fine.”
In fact, Thursday night in Toronto, Hutson twice avoided Leafs Goliath Ryan Reaves, who was clearly trying to lay big hits on him on each occasion.
“Lane Hutson is an elite skater with great on-ice vision,” said Lucas Isenberg, who was having a beer at McLean’s. “The way he sauces the puck is like no one and nothing I have ever seen. I think he’s a great addition to the Canadiens.”
Added Luc Marion: “His skating ability with the puck is something that’s rarely seen. He does things that very few players do, if any.”
Andy Lennox has lived in Toronto for the past 50 years, since he was 11, but he has remained a dyed-in-the-wool Habs’ fan, even if he takes constantly ribbing from his friends in Toronto. He was at McLean’s decked out in full Canadiens regalia Thursday.
“He moves unlike any other player,” Lennox said. “Cale Makar has his own moves. (Quinn) Hughes has his own moves and (Adam) Fox has his own moves. But they are not him. That goal last year, the last game, when Slaf got his 20th goal, Hutson doing his little dipping thing at the blue line, the guys trying to defend against him going into contortions, then he launches the puck in and Slaf tips it in and gets his 20th. I remember someone saying: ‘We’re going to see a lot of that’. So I’m excited. He’s worth being optimistic about.”