Lane Hutson Hockey Prospect

Lane Hutson Was Built For Modern Hockey

There’s a shift boiling under the surface of the sport of ice hockey. A foundational shift that will, in my view, change the way the game is played. It’s already happening. As Ernest Hemingway once described going bankrupt, this change is happening in two ways: gradually and then suddenly.

The gradual change occurred as offensive defensemen became more accepted in the modern day. It evolved into the evolution of what being an offensive defensemen actually means as “rovers” have come back in full force. Offensively gifted defenders have become something akin to fourth forwards. Gradually, defenders have began to adopt patterns akin to a forward, particularly a center.

They join the rush after they exit the zone at exorbitant rates, especially if they have the skating to do so. More and more, the offensive zone is no longer cut in half for a defenseman. These players don’t stand idly upon their perch at the blueline, and wait to unleash slapshots from the heavens as though they wield Zeus’ lightning bolts.

Instead, these defenseman find opportunities to pinch on loose pucks and involve themselves in forechecks as if they were one of the forwards. When their team controls the puck, they find ways to sneak into a lateral passing lane and attack downhill like a center reloading at the top of the zone.

“Position-less hockey” was once a quixotic mantra, but it has been slowly becoming a reality for the last decade.

The current figureheads of this movement, Cale Makar and especially Quinn Hughes, can impact the game in the same way that an elite center would. That is especially true of the latest form of the middle Hughes brother.

It has been happening gradually for the last decade. But now, with the rise of Lane Hutson, it’s about to happen suddenly.

Lane Hutson is a forward who is slotted at the defense position. Once upon a time, that has been used as a slur. An insult to hurl at defenseman who controlled the game through their on-puck prowess rather than smooth rush defense and bone rattling hits. But the game is changing, and those who still leverage this term as a slur are about to be playing a game that’s archaic and utterly obsolete.

My original plan for this piece was to review all of Lane Hutson’s shifts over multiple games, and report my findings from the conglomerate of viewings. But while I’ve viewed multiple Hutson games, the truth is I only really need one game to explain perfectly who and what he is.

It’s his game against the Seattle Kraken. A game where the Montreal Canadians lost in a brutal manner, and where Hutson had a strong performance but not at all one of his best games. In this environment, however, where his team was… well… down bad? Where he was merely a base version of himself, rather than riding a state of flow to a transcendent performance? The true pillars of his game all appeared.

Let’s start with the bad up-front. Lane Hutson’s critics would be correct when they point out that he is rather poor when it comes to defending rushes. He’s a fierce competitor, but he’s undersized and he doesn’t pivot well. His gap control isn’t exactly the envy of the world, and he’s probably going to get burned a few times along the way. Currently, this is manifesting itself in a tendency to take unnecessary penalties. It’ll also eventually manifest itself as a tendency to give up highlight reel goals.

On top of that, if there was someone on the ice who opponents would want to force a cycle to their side? That person would be Lane Hutson. He doesn’t really move people or do much of anything to prevent a player from protecting the puck and finding opportunities to create offense. Given his lack of size, that seems obvious.

It’s also a reflection on the fact that he doesn’t have the same elite skating that some defensemen do. In these situations, he’s mirroring another skater’s footwork instead of setting the tempo, and that leaves him vulnerable.

In that way, it makes Lane Hutson exactly like… nearly every offensively oriented forward ever.

But here’s the thing, he doesn’t just bring a forward’s weaknesses to the defense position. He brings the strengths of a forward, too.

Once he does get the puck on his stick, Lane Hutson is surgical. There is no caveat here. He doesn’t need time or space. Often times, he can and will make a play in the absence of either. His puck skill for a defenseman is anomalous, and his awareness is elite. With those two traits, even when he’s pressed for time and under extreme duress, Hutson generally makes a positive play.

Lane Hutson First Shift – Seattle Game

Hutson’s first shift of the game was emblematic of the way he plays the game. In this shift, he loses inside positioning to Brandon Tanev in a way that is far from ideal. However, the Kraken get nothing out of that. And Hutson has three puck touches in the shift, all of which he makes a distinctly positive play from.

You may dream of running the “whoever offense” on Hutson whenever he comes out for a shift, and punishing his defensive shortcomings at will, but those dreams seldom manifest in reality. The fact is that this isn’t basketball. You aren’t guaranteed possession after Hutson cooks you. Once he gets the puck, your opportunity to do damage is over and you’re left to try again next time.

The flow of hockey is so chaotic that every player tends to touch the puck at least once in every shift. Where players separate themselves is the ability to make positive things happen for their team when they do touch the puck. That isn’t always glamorous. It doesn’t always jump off the page as skillful. There’s a monotonous, robotic efficiency to many of the best on-puck players in the game.

Lane Hutson has that. Even in his rushed touches, such as retrievals or playing loose pucks in the defensive zone, he has the ability to make a play to a teammate that maintains possession for his team.

Of course, there is a glitch in the programming currently. Namely? The Montreal Canadiens are a bad hockey team, and sometimes, they can’t keep possession of a puck even when Lane Hutson makes it stupidly easy for them to do so.

Lane Hutson gets hemmed in this shift, and he makes Jordan Eberle look like Anze Kopitar or Leon Draisaitl protecting that puck. People who want to doubt what he is will eat that up, especially since it ultimately culminates in his team being scored on.

But that only happens because, first, a moment of misfortune where that breakout pass hops over Hutson’s stick. Watch how he times his acceleration to open that lane to begin with. Think about it. We’re coming back to that.

But another layer of misfortune occurs after the initial mishap. This time, Hutson plays a retrieval perfectly and turns the rink into Montreal’s oyster. Unfortunately, the two players in front of the net are both apparently instinctually challenged because they never even reacted to the reverse play that Hutson set up for them. Even though it was a fairly obvious read to make, they just don’t have the players to make those reads.

When both of those things happen in one shift, sure, Hutson is going to eat some punches in the defensive zone. But a hockey team should have higher aspirations than avoiding a few chances against when they play a situation this horribly. Especially at the NHL level.

Because he does so much work to ensure that his team keeps possession once they have it, Hutson is allowed to weaponize his other trait that’s absolutely special for a defenseman but rather commonplace for an elite forward. The ability to find lateral passing lanes, both as a passer and receiver.

Remember that initial breakout pass he was about to receive? That was a subtle example. But it’s not just one example. It’s happening on the macro-scale.

I’m pretty certain it’s not possible to keep this much distance between oneself and the next closest guy as a rookie in a larger sample size, but make no mistake, Lane Hutson’s ability to find east-west passing plays is very much unlike other defensemen.

One might wonder how Alex Newhook missed this pass. I, however, watch Matvei Michkov play for the Flyers. So, I understand exactly how this happened. He simply wasn’t ready for this pass to occur. There was no plan in his head. There was no thought ever lent to the possibility that he’d receive a pass there.

This is a common problem for both Hutson and Michkov. They’re two extremely gifted, cerebral operators. And given the teams they play for? Some might argue they’re occasionally too smart for their own good.

Seemingly, even smart players like Nick Suzuki aren’t totally immune to misplaying around Lane Hutson. If he approaches more towards the back post here instead of taking the straighter path to the net that he did? He would have walked into a tap-in.

A lot of the talk around Hutson has been around his unique level of on-puck deception for a defenseman. I’m not talking too much about that because I think it’s missing the forest for the trees. Hutson’s entire game is unique for a defenseman. His attacking instincts are those of a forward. He just lines up on the backend. He retrieves pucks and starts low in his own end. He’s generally higher up in the offensive zone, but not exclusively.

For all intents and purposes, he’s a playmaking center rather than a defenseman of the typical variety.

This play, for the most part, just boils down to having an extremely high awareness as an attacker. He’s not afraid to have the puck off of his stick. He’s not looking to get rid of it. He’s not rushing a play, as Jamie Drysdale currently loves to do.

Hutson is poised and confident with the puck in the way a playmaking center may be. First, he realizes that the first forechecker is actually playing the drop-pass harder than he’s playing Hutson as a carry threat. So rather than force a drop pass, he throws that hard feint to convince the forechecker he intends to drop the puck off. And while the forechecker bites on his feint, he’s exploding past him.

The next sequence is him being faced with a flat-footed penalty killer who really wasn’t prepared for a skater to be on him this quickly. Hutson fakes one way and explodes laterally in the opposite direction, and that man simply didn’t have the momentum built up to chase down Lane.

At this point, he’d love to have a passing lane opened. But there’s nothing here. So he understands that he has to improvise. He builds speed with lateral crossovers to attack down the wall, but this time, the back pressure is strong and he’s being herded into another defender.

He should be cooked here. Most defensemen are. But he’s not a defenseman! He has the hands of a playmaking center, and he toe drags around the oncoming defender while the back pressure harasses him and turns it into a shot off the post.

Defensemen just don’t do this. They don’t make decisions as if they’re the central attackers of their units. But Lane Hutson does. The changes to the game that allowed this to happen happened gradually at first. But now? They’re happening suddenly.

And the greatest challenge for Montreal will be building a team that can maximize the singular attacking brilliance of their defensive prospect.

In the days of old, a number 1 defenseman would be defined as a do-it-all titan who had no appreciable weaknesses in their game. They played in every situation, and they excelled in every situation. But as the game advances, that breed is dying out. We are in the burgeoning phase of a new era.

In this new era, specialists are beginning to take over. It’s now possible to provide baseline competency (or something approaching that) in other areas while providing all-world value in your area of expertise on the ice. And in any collaborative environment, be it team-sports or business, it’s difficult to beat specialists with strong interplay with a Superman who attempts to ace every category and subproject.

That’s Lane Hutson in a nutshell. He’s a specialist. A puck playing magician whose talents do lend towards tilting the ice in his favor, even if he doesn’t accomplish it in the way that old hockey pabulum has always encouraged.

But the change that has allowed Lane Hutson to thrive in the NHL didn’t start with him. It’s just accelerating with his presence.

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