The Montreal Canadiens made shockwaves during the 2022 NHL Draft when they snagged Juraj Slafkovsky with the first-overall selection. There was an audible gasp when general manager Kent Hughes made the pick. That gave way to plenty of cheers, but it was impossible to ignore the smattering of boos that rained down as the lanky forward made his way toward the stage.
The fans, in this case, were wrong to be upset. No player from the 2022 draft has more points than
Slafkovsky, and while there is more to measuring NHL success than scoring, 184 points in 282 games is a pretty stellar start. Montreal made two picks in the first round of 2022, and another early in the second, but it'd be easy to argue that the best player from this class (and maybe the draft as a whole) wasn't taken until selection 62 rolled around.
That player, of course, was defenseman Lane Hutson. It's hard to find reactions to that pick because no one was recording. Why would anyone on hand think that they'd need first-hand evidence of what it sounded like when a small blueliner from the US National Development Team was picked late in the second round? As high as Hughes and his staff can claim they were on this player, not even in their wildest dreams could they have imagined that the Holland, Michigan native would pan out as well as he has so far.
Lane Hutson is thriving where most smaller offense-first blueliners struggle
Here's the thing: there are plenty of offense-leaning defenseman who put up big numbers in the regular season, and then vanish when it's playoff time. Postseason hockey is different, and opposing teams love to dump pucks in on smaller defenders before running them through the boards. They wear down over the course of a series and eventually stop impacting games with their skill set.
Some individuals are just wired differently, and Hutson appears to be an absolute NHL playoff gamer. A dawg, if you will. While the rest of Montreal's best players were struggling to break through against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round, it was frequently the 5-foot-9, 162-pound defenseman making larger-than-life plays.
Whether it's his excellent--artistic, even--zone entries on the power play, or keeping a play alive by holding the puck at the blue line Hutson always seems to be where he needs to be. He never seems to feel the pressure of the moment, and, most importantly, he hasn't failed to deliver for the Canadiens when they need him the most.
Game 5 against Sabres another prime example of Hutson's NHL playoff excellence
Game 5 between Montreal and the Buffalo Sabres didn't start as a landslide. It had a Wild West vibe, where it felt like whichever team took the last shot of the contest would come away with the win. The teams traded goals in the first, and the Habs trailed by one heading into the first intermission.
Then Hutson did what Hutson has done in seemingly every playoff game of his young NHL career: he made a fantastic read to push into the offensive zone, and then made a cross-ice, tape-to-tape pass to an open forward that would make Paul Coffey do a double-take. He makes it look so simple that it's easy to take for granted.
The kicker is that there's a decent chance that Hutson hasn't even started to scratch the surface of what he can do for the Canadiens. Look out West, and the Colorado Avalanche aren't the same team without Cal Makar making the same kind of high-end, highlight-reel plays that Hutson is slowly adding to his resume with every passing game. These kinds of players aren't just important in today's NHL. They are necessary.
They are also remarkably expensive to acquire if not homegrown. Just ask the Minnesota Wild. Or maybe don't. No need to add to their suffering at the moment. The fact is that there is an envy-worthy core of young players in place in Montreal who all seem made of the same stuff. How great was Ivan Demidov in Game 5, for example?
With every passing shift, period, game, and series, Hutson is making the Canadiens look like geniuses for using a late second-round pick on him. Not only did they unearth an incredibly talented player in Hutson. They also found a defender capable of stepping up and standing tall when the spotlight is the brightest. In the NHL playoffs, where more often than not, players of Hutson's stature wilt.
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