We’ve said it repeatedly: the future is bright for the Montreal Canadiens because of the quality of the young players they’ve got right now and coming up through the system. The Athletic’s Corey Pronman seems to agree since he put seven Canadiens in his top 139 NHL players and prospects under 23.
Related: Canadiens in the Best NHL Players and prospects Under 23
However, his assessment of rookie defenseman Lane Hutson has got Canadiens’ fans up in arms, and it’s hard not to see their point. Pronman has got Hutson in 39th place rating his skating and puck skills as above average, his hockey sense as high-end and, surprisingly, his compete level as average. The journalist writes:
There’s no doubting Hutson’s offense—the doubt comes down to his defense. He’s a small defenseman with good but not great feet and not very physical. He has so much offense that he could still be a top-four defenseman, but he may also give up a lot of goals.
It therefore seems Pronman equates compete level with physicality, while that can certainly be an indicator, it’s not the only one. His other negative comment is about Hutson’s feet, and while that too can be taken into account, I do not agree with his assessment.
Whenever Hutson loses’ the puck, he chases the player he lost it to as if his life depended on it and more often than not, he catches up to him. When he gets to him, he doesn’t wrestle the opponent off the puck as a She Weber would have done, but he uses his other skills to make his life more complicated, granted he will sometimes end up with a penalty, but that certainly doesn’t indicate a lack of compete.
In fact, whenever the Canadiens are down on the scoreboard and desperately looking for a goal, the young blueliner craves the puck, he wants it on his stick to do something about it. Coach Martin St-Louis has said it quite a few times “He wants to be the man”. I fail to see how that can be indicative of a compete level that’s below average.
Related: Lane Hutson Took Over the Rookie Scoring Lead
If you want to see the bright side of things however, the last time Pronman had undergone the exercise, he had ranked Hutson 87th. That was last September and back then, Montreal had eight players on the list, which one isn’t there anymore? Justin Barron. He was ranked 99th, since then he has been traded to Nashville and disappeared from the list.
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