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Montreal Canadiens Mythbusting: Lane Hutson’s Defensive Impact

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1 month ago

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montreal canadiens lane hutson credit annik lemire

By now you’re surely aware Montreal Canadiens defenceman Lane Hutson is in the midst of one of the most productive rookie campaigns in league history.

With five goals and 48 assists to his credit, Hutson is on pace for a 65-point season, which would end up tying Ray Bourque for the fifth-best rookie scoring season ever put together by a freshman in the NHL.

The only former players Hutson is not projected to surpass are as follows: Larry Murphy (76), Brian Leetch (71), Gary Suter (68), and Phil Housley (66). For those of you a little too young to recognize those names, they’re essentially the best offensive defencemen in an era when defence was optional, and goaltending was questionable, at best.

With all due respect to Mike Liut and the rest of the goaltenders from the 80s, I’d argue the current crop of goaltenders are leagues above their predecessors, making Hutson’s production a little more impressive.

But what about his defensive play? Many have suggested Hutson is a bad defender. I even saw someone say he’s one of the worst defencemen in the league. That person had not watched a single minute of gameplay including Hutson, but I digress.

If you take a look at his player cards produced by various data analysis outlets, you may get the impression that Hutson can’t defend. But those player cards are simply an introduction to a player, and frankly, hold little to no value to those who follow a team closely, as most of you do.

In this case, Hutson’s underlying stats don’t look great, though it should be noted his possession metrics have improved by leaps and bounds since joining the league.

I’d argue it’s not necessarily a case of Hutson finding his rhythm, though that is a factor.

Lane Hutson Defensive Partners

As it stands, Hutson has played 50 or more minutes at 5v5 with six different defensive partners. With the exception of David Savard and Kaiden Guhle, Hutson’s numbers have been well above replacement. Even Guhle’s stats, which are rarely on the positive side, enjoyed a bump.

To give you an idea of the numbers, CF% is the shot share when a certain player is on the ice. For example, when Mike Matheson and Hutson played together, they controlled 54% of the shots (523-439). Jayden Struble and Hutson control over 55% of the shots, an encouraging sign when we consider Struble was on the outside looking in earlier in the year.

But when Hutson played with Savard, they were outshot by a significant margin. To the point that you could say it was one of the worst combinations in the NHL this season.

As for Savard, well, his best years are clearly behind him, as evidenced by the fact that not a single Montreal Canadiens defenceman managed to produce half-decent numbers when playing with the veteran.

You’ll note his shot share (CF%) alongside Arber Xhekaj is much better than his season average (42.5%), which means we do have to give credit to Xhekaj for treading water in a very difficult assignment. No, he didn’t improve Savard’s stats to the point where you could suggest they’re a healthy pairing, but Xhekaj did have the biggest positive impact on the numbers.

Regardless, it’s quite clear that no one on the team can produce positive results alongside Savard. The numbers do not lie.

To confirm Xhekaj’s impact, we can  also look at his defensive partners. Lo and behold, he was excellent alongside Struble and Hutson, but suffered a significant downtick in results while paired with Savard.

Simply put, there’s absolutely no evidence available to propose Savard is not a drag on his teammates’ stats, and that certainly applies to Hutson’s numbers.

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Montreal Canadiens Brass Tacks

We can’t erase history. There’s no avoiding the fact that Hutson struggled mightily when playing with Savard, and those numbers will be part of the final review at the end of the year.

But we can isolate Hutson’s stats, with and without Savard, to get a better idea of his recent play.

Without Savard, Hutson controls over 53 percent of the shots, 56 percent of the goals, 52 percent of the expected goals, and 51 percent of the high-danger chances.

Those are exceptional statistics, and they show that when Hutson is on the ice, the Habs control the play.

With Savard, Hutson controlled 40 percent of the shots, 29 percent of the goals, 40 percent of the expected goals, and 37 percent of the high-danger chances.

Essentially, he went from producing numbers you’d expect from an ECHL call-up, to producing some of the best stats we’ve seen from a Canadiens defenceman in the last decade or so, both when it comes to production and his impact on the Canadiens’ underlying numbers.

Lane Hutson won’t win the Norris Trophy this year.

He may not even win the Calder, though he should be considered the front-runner.

And that’s fine.

But one thing we shouldn’t do is get caught up in the white noise when it comes to Hutson’s stats. Yes, when he was paired with a defenceman that struggles nightly, the numbers were not good, and that is reflected in most of the player cards that people use without understanding the numbers they’re presenting.

However, that exact situation will never occur again, which means his stats alongside Savard are fairly irrelevant.

I’d put much more onus on his recent numbers, which prove he’s not just a defenceman that can produce, but also one that keeps the puck 200 feet away from his goaltender, and in the long run, that’s the best possible defence.

In other words, the rumours of Hutson’s defensive deficiencies have been greatly exaggerated.

All Montreal Canadiens and Lane Hutson statistics are 5v5 unless otherwise noted, via Natural Stat Trick.

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