BROSSARD, Que. — NHL cutdown day is always about the guys on the bubble who made it, and those who didn’t. Which is why the smile on Oliver Kapanen’s peach-fuzzed face was a perfect image after Montreal Canadiens practice Monday.
It was the smile of a dream realized.
As Kapanen turned his back to the dressing room to put his equipment away in his locker, there was no one standing in front of him. By the time he turned back around, there were three television cameras and a handful of reporters waiting to speak to him. So he smiled.
Welcome to the NHL.
Standing right next to him at the edge of the Canadiens dressing room was Emil Heineman, who was getting chirped by Juraj Slafkovský from outside the room as he spoke to reporters, a true sign he had made the show.
At the opposite end of the room, Alex Barré-Boulet, 27, was secure in the knowledge he would be breaking camp in the NHL for a second straight season, only this time with his home province Canadiens instead of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
And absent from the dressing room were Joshua Roy, Logan Mailloux and Adam Engström, on their way to Laval after being on the wrong side of that bubble Monday.
But right in the middle of the dressing room, where established players generally sit, there was defenceman Lane Hutson. There was no real question he was going to make the Canadiens’ opening roster, and as a result it might have been a bit of an afterthought on this day. But it was still the day Hutson’s NHL dream was realized, even if he played the final two games of the prior regular season.
It was a moment he had dreamed of since he was a kid, and it happened decidedly unceremoniously. The team gathered in the video room prior to practice, coach Martin St. Louis walked in and said, basically, if you are in the room right now, you’ve made the team.
That was it.
“I’m glad it was that way so you don’t have to wait around to see,” Hutson said. “It was definitely cool, but there’s a lot of work to do and I’m excited to learn from all of the great players we have in here, too.”
The reason Hutson’s inclusion on the opening roster was more of a foregone conclusion than anything else is how big of a role he will be expected to play as a rookie: a spot in the top-four on defence with veteran David Savard, quarterbacking the second power play unit — for now — and a lot of minutes presumably available to him if all goes well.
And by all goes well, of course, we mean if he can prove he can defend in the NHL. And while so many people have their doubts on whether a 5-foot-9, 160-pound defenceman can survive in his own end, St. Louis has never expressed those same doubts about Hutson, and he didn’t do that Monday either.
“So far his size hasn’t made me think that he can’t defend,” St. Louis said. “I think he plays with a tremendous amount of pace. He’s got a mental pace, but his feet are quick. So he’s able to close and he reads the game really well. So he’s not going to defend the same as a (Kaiden) Guhle, but so far what he’s shown me is he can take care of that part of the job. Now, is that something we’re going to have to keep an eye on? Absolutely. We’re not worried about what he can do offensively and drive possession on offence, but like every young defenceman, we’ve got to expect him to do the things he needs to do defensively.”
As St. Louis intimated, Hutson’s play in his own end without the puck, his ability to defend the front of his own net, to come out of board battles with the puck, will be constantly under scrutiny. It will be important for that scrutiny to be fair, to hold him to a standard typical of other offensive defencemen and not someone like, say, Guhle. But Hutson still has something to prove in that area, and he is about to get his opportunity.
And if Hutson figures that out, the Canadiens could have a Calder Trophy candidate on their hands. Because when we say Hutson will get an opportunity, when you hear St. Louis talk about him, you get a very real sense that not only will he get an opportunity, he will get the chance to make mistakes and play through them. Because the reward on the other side of those mistakes is so great.
“He attacks ice, he attacks space, with or without the puck,” St. Louis said. “He sees plays develop before they do. And when he doesn’t have a lot of space, he’s really good at creating space. Elite players, their definition of space is probably smaller than non-elite players. An elite player doesn’t need a lot of space to create stuff, and an average player probably needs a little more space. But I feel for him, he can get in a phone booth and create space.”
Lane Hutson has impressed coach Martin St. Louis in camp with his ability to attack the ice. (David Kirouac / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Now that Hutson is in the NHL, we felt it was important to relay to him something he might have missed last season when Vancouver Canucks captain and reigning Norris Trophy winner Quinn Hughes went out of his way to give Hutson a shoutout, telling Canadiens fans they should have nothing to worry about, that Hutson will be fine in the NHL.
Hutson had not heard the story, and a smile quickly crept across his face.
“That’s really cool. I didn’t know that,” Hutson said. “It definitely means a lot coming from a guy like that. He’s a Norris Trophy winner, a special player and he’s going to be a special player for a long time. He adjusted (to the NHL) too, and he’s someone that I’m trying to follow in his footsteps a bit, changing the game like he changed it for me, changed it for all smaller D coming up. It’s something special and I’m excited to learn from watching him, like I already have but even more so because he’s under the microscope. He’s such a good player.”
Indeed, Hutson has been watching Hughes and New York Rangers’ Norris-winner Adam Fox for years, picking up tips on how they defend at their size, building his database of information on how to make the transition with the Canadiens.
“They’re two different skaters. Quinn Hughes uses his speed, his quickness to really squeeze out plays so early where nothing can come of it. That’s something I try to do, I’m still working on it, obviously,” Hutson said. “And then Adam Fox, you see how he’s so positionally sound. Great edges too, but he doesn’t necessarily have the speed that Quinn does. It’s interesting to see how all these different guys defend. Even growing up watching Duncan Keith, seeing him always skate forwards and close off plays, that’s something that’s an elite-level play.”
Some see Hutson’s tendency to turn around and skate forwards when defending the rush as a sign his backward skating is somehow deficient. But no, it’s a strategy, one he developed watching Keith with the Chicago Blackhawks growing up, and Hughes more recently.
It is only one example of the different kinds of strategies Hutson will surely develop over the course of his first NHL season: watching what others do, learning opponents’ tendencies, getting a greater grasp on the rhythm and pace of the NHL and how his own defensive game can best fit into that.
Lane Hutson still has a lot to prove in the NHL, but he has proven it every time he has jumped a level and was told the transition would be too hard on him at his size, only to dominate instead. This is his biggest jump yet, but as he has shown time and again, you should bet against Lane Hutson at your own peril.
(Top photo of Lane Hutson: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
