The season-long Lane Hutson referendum always seems to be coming to a head, unfortunately for him and for everyone, really.
His critics are constantly looking for the moment he proves them right, saying he is a one-way player and costs the Montreal Canadiens more defensively than he brings them offensively.
Well, for that crowd, Saturday night must have been a catharsis of sorts.
Hutson finished a 7-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs with a minus-5 rating, tied for the worst mark by a defenceman this season with Winnipeg’s Dylan Samberg on Oct. 28 and Calgary’s Kevin Bahl on Dec. 8. But it was only the third-worst plus/minus in a game this season, because the worst mark is a tie among two forwards who were each involved in that game Saturday night.
On Jan. 9 in Carolina, Maple Leafs superstars Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner were each a minus-6 in a 6-3 loss to the Hurricanes.
They must be terrible defensively.
But we digress.
Because this is not about Hutson’s game Saturday, which was admittedly difficult for him, something he had trouble digesting as he appeared postgame on RDS. As the L’Antichambre panel tried desperately to cheer Hutson up and make him smile, he would have none of it, insisting repeatedly that he needed to be better, refusing to smile and wallowing in his tough night at the office on live television.
Kudos to him for respecting the commitment he made to the show, even though it was clearly the last thing on earth he wanted to do at that moment.
But this is very much about the next night, when Hutson had an opportunity to make up for that dash-5 the previous night, and would have been forgiven had he wanted to prove that on his first shift of the game. But Hutson didn’t do that. In fact, he played a very controlled game, right up until the moment the Canadiens needed Hutson to have an impact, take a bit of a risk and show his talent.
FONCE. AU. FILET.
CRASH. THE. NET.#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/D4888MOrQU
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) January 20, 2025
“He’s still a young player but he sees himself as a guy that has to get everything done every single night. I respect that about him,” Nick Suzuki said after the game against the New York Rangers on Sunday. “I was kind of a similar way as a young guy, but you’ve got to find a (balance) between putting too much pressure on yourself. He always seems to rebound after bad games. It wasn’t even like he played that bad, just the stat sheet didn’t show up to be too good for him.
“He makes a great play on (Juraj Slafkovský)’s goal. Skating the puck, handling the puck, he’s a big piece for us.”
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said after the Rangers game he wasn’t surprised Hutson bounced back after that tough outing against the Maple Leafs, noting Hutson is a team-first guy, someone willing and able to do whatever the team needs to win a game. But earlier, during the Canadiens’ last road trip, St. Louis said something that might be the biggest compliment he could have possibly given him.
“He’s got the skill to do what his mind is telling him to do,” St. Louis said after Hutson’s three-assist performance in Utah last Tuesday.
As it turns out, Hutson also has the skill to ignore what his mind is telling him to do, to play the game in front of him and not force anything coming off a poor performance, and to wait for his opportunity and when it presents itself, to strike.
“He made a lot of plays tonight,” St. Louis said after Sunday’s game. “I’m not surprised. Lane’s a hockey player. He’s going to battle, and he won some pucks in the corner against bigger guys. Lane is very talented, Lane is about the group, Lane’s not about Lane, so I’m not surprised.”
A tough start for a rookie
This got lost in the euphoria of the Canadiens’ overtime win against the Rangers, but the first Rangers goal of the game was quite the mess-up.
When Alexis Lafrenière opened the scoring, creating the first of four deficits the Canadiens systematically erased, the Canadiens only had four players on the ice.
As you can see here, moments before Lafrenière scored, Jake Evans was signalling to the Canadiens bench that they needed another player.
We asked St. Louis after the game what happened here, and he was somewhat evasive while also stating the obvious.
“Someone didn’t go on the ice,” he said.
Duh.
Owen Beck was also asked about it after the game, and he admitted it was a miscommunication with Joel Armia. As it turns out, they both thought they were replacing the same player on the line change, and when Armia went out, Beck stayed on the bench. So the Canadiens played for an extended period with four players on the ice as a result.
As it turns out, it didn’t matter. But still, not an ideal thing to happen in your first NHL home game.
Alex Newhook has embraced the defensive value of his speed. (Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
The emergence of the 200-foot version of Newhook
Alex Newhook has been an under-the-radar work in progress this season.
Back in early December, we asked St. Louis where Newhook’s game was at, and his response was quite telling back then, but especially now.
“He’s a guy that brings pace,” St. Louis said back then. “I feel that for Newy, he’s a great skater, but I don’t think he understands how much that speed is important not just offensively, but defensively. The way he tracks back, he cuts a lot of plays in the neutral zone because of his speed.”
After the Canadiens’ 5-3 win in Utah last Tuesday, we asked St. Louis a similarly open-ended question about Newhook’s game, with no reference to his defensive game at all, and this was the response.
“Newy’s always had very good pace, and I think, to me, the past two or three weeks, his touches are cleaner and he sees things clearer,” St. Louis said. “His feet are always going, but I think he’s slowed his mind down a little bit. He’s found a place right now as a player where he can contribute offensively, but with his feet, he’s doing a heck of a job defensively for us, too.
“Recently at least, there haven’t been too many games where we don’t see him. He’s there, he has an impact on the game. Even if he doesn’t necessarily get the individual statistics, he helps the team get results, not just offensively but defensively as well. He uses his feet a lot in how we defend, in the neutral zone, tracking back. I’m happy with his evolution.”
When it was noted to St. Louis that he had mentioned a month earlier that this was an area of Newhook’s game he needed to pay attention to, he said of course he had spoken to Newhook about it.
Message received.
“There were a couple of moments there in previous games where I could have just been a little more on my toes in situations where I think I can value (my speed defensively) a little bit more,” Newhook said Saturday before the game against the Maple Leafs. “I think that’s been a focus for me moving forward here.”
Here is an example of Newhook using his feet defensively early against the Rangers. This is one way his speed can be hard to play against defensively.
“I think speed is a part of my game that I try to use in a lot of different ways, and I think defensively it’s something I can use to close the gap on guys quick and catch guys off guard, use my feet to defend,” Newhook said. “I think it’s an important part of my game, I’ve been focused on it a little more recently and it’s been going well.”
What St. Louis said about Newhook in early December was somewhat unprompted. He was asked a general question and how Newhook was playing, and that was what he said. This is another example of St. Louis’ public messaging matching what he is delivering to his players, and it is also another example of his messaging to his players reaching a captive audience.
The captain on his winger
While the entire league has been holding a referendum on Hutson, the spotlight in Montreal has been largely focused on Kirby Dach and Slafkovský. Last week, at the beginning of the road trip, Suzuki was asked about Slafkovský and didn’t really hold back that there was more for him to give.
“I think the last few games have been good,” Suzuki said last Monday. “He kind of called himself out on the road trip a little bit, which is nice to see from a young guy. He really brought his A-game recently.”
With Slafkovský, it is always a question of the physicality he brings and his commitment to skating, two things that go hand in hand. Slafkovský himself has had trouble explaining why both those elements of his game are so inconsistent.
Before the game against the Rangers, he was asked about how heavy he was early in the game against the Maple Leafs, and he chose to focus on how that part of his game waned as the game went on.
“I always want to be physical. Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not,” Slafkovský said. “Yesterday it started that way, but I also think I was physical for half the game, and the other half of the game I don’t know what I was doing. So, yeah, I have to play the full 60 minutes the same way.”
A couple hours after saying those words, we would suggest Slafkovský did play 60 minutes that way against the Rangers. He was a load, he was winning battles along the wall, he was using his physical gifts to his advantage. He did what he set out to do.
Going back to what Suzuki said about his linemate last Monday, this message appears to be getting through to Slafkovský, slowly but surely.
“Some games it seems like no one can take the puck off him,” Suzuki said then. “These defencemen get paid a lot of money to just win puck battles. You have to be smart going in there. He can use his size, but going in with a good mindset and knowing what your plan is going into each battle is super important. He’s figuring that out as he goes.
“At 20, I wasn’t winning as many puck battles as I do now. He’s such a young guy, and he’s learning as the season progresses.”
How did the coach handle the negativity the front office saw?
When Kent Hughes had his midseason media availability, one comment he made jumped out — that this was the first time this administration had to handle so much negativity surrounding the team earlier this season when things got off to a terrible start.
Hughes noted how the front office will learn from the experience and know how to handle it better next time. Which suggests it was a difficult thing for them to handle.
The thing is, the same could be said of St. Louis as coach. The negativity surrounding the team in early November was largely toward him, and while we got a glimpse of how he was handling it at the time, now that he’s gone through it and gotten to the other side, has he learned anything as a result of that inevitable experience?
“I try not to get caught up too much in what people are saying, because it’s not going to change anything I do,” St. Louis said in Utah last week. “It’s probably harder on my dad than on me. But, listen, the expectations were higher this year, so I expected that, even if I’m not a guy that’s going to listen to it, I know that’s probably what’s happening just because of where we were earlier in the season. But it gave us an opportunity to roll up our sleeves and just go to work and trust our own little process.
“If we had a better record earlier in the season, would it be just Band-Aids? Would we be playing as good as we are right now if we didn’t roll up our sleeves early and really attack something with more than just a Band-Aid? So we dug deep one thing at a time, and the players were very engaged. We didn’t see the results right away, but the players knew, they felt it was starting to flip. And now, the group is very confident, and now it’s to maintain that mindset, that consistency knowing that it’s not going to guarantee you victories all the time. But I like our process, the way we talk about games that we win, and the games that we lose, we’re very process-driven. It allows us to stay sane throughout a long season in a market like this.”
(Top photo of Lane Hutson against the Rangers: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
