How Lane Hutson’s defensive game can continue to grow with the Canadiens

Our crack squad released the seventh edition of the NHL player tiers project Wednesday, and the Montreal Canadiens fare quite well: seven of the NHL’s top 150 players, with captain Nick Suzuki topping the team’s list in the 2B franchise player tier.

Of course, as is always the case when he finds himself on any list, Lane Hutson’s placement will probably be the source of the most debate.

Hutson was placed in the 2C tier, meaning he is on the third rung of franchise players in the league. He is also the 11th NHL defenceman on the list — ahead of several excellent players, but far behind his sixth-place finish in Norris Trophy voting in his second full year in the league. It is worth noting that at age 22, Hutson is the second-youngest defenceman of the 18 listed in the first three tiers, behind only New York Islanders Calder Trophy winner Matthew Schaefer, who debuts on the list at the bottom of tier 2A.

I personally don’t have an issue with where Hutson slots in on the list. In fact, for a player just starting his second NHL contract with his best years still ahead of him, Hutson is very high. It’s important to note the process for our player tier panel, which includes Dom Luszczyszyn, Shayna Goldman, Sean Gentille, Harman Dayal and Thomas Drance. That process begins with Luszczyszyn’s player evaluation model producing a Net Rating for all players, then moves on to an internal debate among the panel to flesh out some of the disagreements they might have with the model, and then takes that preliminary list to a group of more than 20 people connected to the game today, including executives, coaches, scouts and former players. The list adjusts from there to account for their input.

It is not a list that was simply thrown together, in other words.

During the final phase of that process, the panel gathers anonymous quotes from the people they consulted. We’d like to explore one of the quotes included in the Hutson blurb.

“I like Hutson where he is, because he’s still incomplete,” one executive said. “Don’t forget Quinn Hughes didn’t f—ing defend at all (early in his career). They had to protect him. They had to make sure he played against the right lines, played in the right zones, had the right partner. Now look at him.”

That is not necessarily a negative comment. In fact, it appears to be meant as a compliment that Hutson still has room to grow and round out his game, much like Hughes has. Still, there is an inherent assessment in that quote, and in the comparison to Hughes’ early years, that Hutson can’t defend and needs to be sheltered.

I asked our panel if there were any other quotes they gathered that didn’t make the cut but came to that same assessment. The answer was no. In fact, most of the responses they gathered viewed Hutson’s defence in a positive light, especially after the Canadiens’ playoff run last spring.

“People say he still has room to improve defensively, but I’ll tell you what: You watch that playoffs, and he didn’t hurt the Montreal Canadiens in their own end,” one coach said. “If the puck is loose, he’s either going to retrieve it and go, or he’s going to start the rush, and to me, that’s defending.”

To which you can add this from a scout: “People worry about his ability to defend, (but) I didn’t see that against Tampa. I thought he was really, really good.”

This always seems to be the debate with Hutson. Any of his defensive attributes are always tagged with the qualifier “for his size.” And the reality is you could view Hutson as being sheltered because he generally doesn’t get the toughest matchups and starts most of his shifts in the offensive zone.

If you watch Hutson defend, though, it quickly becomes clear he is not just adequate defensively — he is quite effective, and his usage can be explained by the fact the Canadiens need him to generate offence. That’s why he starts shifts in the offensive zone. That’s why he gets secondary matchups. That’s why he doesn’t kill penalties.

It is not because Hutson can’t do more defensively. It is because the Canadiens want and need him to focus his energy on offence.

And yet, this belief that Hutson hurts the Canadiens defensively remains prevalent. Despite the fact it is largely false.

Toward the end of last season, I asked Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis why he felt Hutson was an effective defender, and he had an interesting explanation.

“I think it’s his anticipation and reads, because I feel he’s always competed,” he said. “He’s such an offensive guy that he probably makes great reads defensively just by reverse-engineering it. And I feel like the best players do that. So probably in his reverse-engineering mind, he’s taking the most likely next option because he reads it fast because he understands it on the other side of the puck.”

Watching tape on Hutson’s defensive-zone possessions, it is easy to see what St. Louis is talking about. Anticipation is a big part of Hutson’s defensive game, along with the quickness and edge work to execute and cut off what he is anticipating. Another element of his offensive game shines through on the defensive end: deception. Offensively, Hutson’s deception often forces defenders to fall over themselves trying to keep up with his head and shoulder fakes and quick feet. Defensively, however, Hutson lulls puck carriers into a false sense of security and then acts on it.

Take this sequence from a Feb. 2 game in Minnesota.

In this first shot, we see Wild forward Matt Boldy entering the Canadiens zone on the penalty kill with Hutson defending the blue line. Hutson has a good gap, and most importantly, he has his stick almost touching the puck as Boldy crosses the line. According to Sportlogiq, Hutson denied 2.64 zone entries per game last season, in the 98th percentile and had an entry denial rate of 49.3 percent, in the 80th percentile.

The gap and stick placement here are big reasons why, even if Boldy does successfully manage to gain the zone.

Once Boldy hits the hashmarks, Hutson cuts off his space and Boldy curls back toward the blue line to either look for support or just kill time with the puck on his stick.

That moment Boldy takes to look for teammates is the sense of security Hutson needs. Often, a hard curl on a defender who might not be expecting it offers you a bit of time and space to think while the defender reacts. Except with Hutson, that reaction time offers no time and space to Boldy.

Hutson is right there.

Next thing Boldy knows, Hutson is under his hands, his stick is on the puck, and the puck is off Boldy’s stick.

Even though Boldy is killing a penalty here, he is a big, strong, powerful forward with a ton of skill, and if he looks up and sees only Hutson and potentially Cole Caufield blocking his path to the Canadiens’ net, he’s going to try and take it. He didn’t here, because he couldn’t, and ultimately the Canadiens were heading back up ice with Boldy now behind on the play.

This is typical of how Hutson defends one-on-one: standing his ground, removing time and space, and using his anticipation to exploit that false sense of security an attacker might feel.

There are two other primary areas of the defensive game where Hutson is in the upper echelon of NHL defencemen, and one of them was referred to by the anonymous coach quoted above when he said, “If the puck is loose he’s either going to retrieve it and go, or he’s going to start the rush, and to me, that’s defending.”

According to Sportlogiq data, Hutson had 13.26 defensive-zone loose puck recoveries per game last season, placing him in the 98th percentile in that category. And he was in the 88th percentile for both stick checks (1.12 per game) and blocked passes (3.98 per game), both of which speak to how well Hutson combines his anticipation with a good stick to not only compensate for his lack of size but often make it a non-factor completely.

Take this sequence against the Boston Bruins on Nov. 15 as an example.

Hutson is defending an entry by Bruins forward Mark Kastelic — all 6-foot-4, 234 pounds of him. Kastelic uses that size to his advantage and essentially shoos Hutson away like a fly and has a clear lane to the net.

But the play is not over for Hutson, as he recovers and gets his stick on the puck at just the right moment as Kastelic begins to cut toward the middle of the ice.

From there, Hutson shoves Kastelic against the boards to separate him from the loose puck …

… and then seals him against the boards to leave that loose puck for a teammate to hopefully collect, which didn’t happen here.

But still, what that anonymous executive said about Hutson’s game being incomplete is not necessarily false. Hutson has a lot to learn, and he will indeed get better in the coming years and should move up in the player tiers next year.

Some of that improvement could come from a change in usage.

For one, Hutson has accomplished much of what he’s done so far in the NHL playing on his off side. Based on what we saw last season, he will be better off when the Canadiens find a way to move him back to his natural left side. Hutson played 51 games on the right and 31 on the left last season, giving us a good sample of both to compare. The numbers suggest there is a lot of potential growth sitting right there for Hutson simply by switching to his natural side.

It is important to note before looking at the numbers that these are the games Hutson started on one side or the other, but would often get multiple shifts playing with different partners and on different sides of the ice, most notably when he’d be sent out with Noah Dobson in offensive situations. Still, this is a decent snapshot of his five-on-five results on either side of the ice, courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.

Hutson’s numbers playing on the right are still very good — they’re just not as good as when he played primarily on the left.

Another area for growth in Hutson’s game would be increased penalty kill time. He played roughly 40 minutes last season, but in those minutes, he had the best goal, shot and chance suppression numbers among the team’s defencemen.

The theory behind Hutson not getting time on the penalty kill is the same as his five-on-five deployment: He plays so much on the power play and at five-on-five that something has to give. This is also why Suzuki is used sparingly on the penalty kill despite being one of the team’s best penalty-killing forwards.

Still, it’s not as if it can’t be done. Of the 21 defencemen who played at least three minutes a night on the power play last season (Hutson was at 3:18), 10 played at least 90 seconds a game on the penalty kill as well: Cale Makar, Evan Bouchard, Seth Jones, Miro Heiskanen, Erik Karlsson, Jake Sanderson, Jackson LaCombe, Moritz Seider, Mikhail Sergachev and Charlie McAvoy.

Hutson was at 28 seconds per game.

It is difficult to say if Hutson’s performance in a small sample of minutes would hold up over a bigger sample, but considering his best defensive skill is his anticipation, which is most useful on the penalty kill, it would at least be worth finding out.