The Montreal Canadiens are used to faring well in various rankings by now, be it for prospects or current players; it’s not only the future that’s bright for the Sainte-Flanelle, but the present also looks like a shiny summer day. On Wednesday, The Athletic published its ranking of under-23 players, and Kent Hughes’ team fared well, with two players in the top 10; they may not be the ones you expected, though.
This is another article penned by, I think it’s now fair to say, the controversial Corey Pronman, and it’s the next logical step after his ranking of each team’s pipeline. In that ranking, he put Montreal in third place, and the two prospects he deemed best for the Tricolore now figure in this top 10. Juraj Slafkovsky comes in at number four, behind Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard and Matthew Schaefer. Then, at number eight, we find Canadiens’ sophomore, Ivan Demidov. The fifth, sixth and seventh spots are occupied by the league’s highest-paid player, Leo Carlsson, Logan Cooley and Beckett Sennecke. Adam Fantili and Michael Misa wrap up the top 10.
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While having two of the top 10 players in this ranking is good news for the Habs, it’s hard not to notice who seems to be a glaring omission from this list: Lane Hutson. Pronman puts him at number 11 in his Tier 4, which regroups players he considers to be “top of the lineup players”. He labels Tier 1 players “Elite NHL player,” Tier 2 players “NHL Star,” and Tier 3 “Bubble NHL star and top of the lineup player.” To exclude Hutson from the top 10 is one thing, but to think he won’t be an NHL star is quite another; to be fair, in Montreal at least, he already is a star.
In his explanation for Hutson’s ranking, Pronman mentions:
The hope is he can continue to be average defensively to make up for his off-the-charts offense. He projects as a long-term top-pair defenseman who will be a top scorer.- Pronman on Hutson
He also deems his skating and compete “above average” and his puck skills and hockey sense “high-end”. To say that Hutson is average defensively sounds like a preconceived idea from someone who hasn’t watched the Canadiens’ defenseman play much over the last two seasons. He finished the last season with a plus-36 rating, the highest one among the league’s most productive defensemen. Evan Bouchard, who led the league in points for blueliners with 95, was plus-25; Zach Werenski, who had 81 points and won the Norris Trophy, was a plus-seven; and Cale Makar, who put up 79 points, was a plus-32. Granted, the plus/minus metric may not be perfect, but at the end of the day, you want your defensemen to be on the ice more often for goals for than for goals against.
As for Hutson’s compete level, anyone who has seen him backcheck like a man possessed can see it's high-end, and that also shows in how much he wants the puck at crunch time. When the Canadiens need a goal, Hutson wants the puck; he loathes losing and knows he can often be the key to a comeback with his elusive moves and high-end playmaking.
In fact, the problem with this latest ranking is not just that Hutson is excluded from the top-10, but that Pronman has Slafkovsky and Demidov ahead of him. You can talk all day about Hutson being undersized, but after two seasons, the league still has no answer for his unique blend of skill and elusiveness. You can’t hit what you can’t catch, and Hutson has proven to be a mastermind at escaping opponents' checks.
NHL.com's top 20 NHL rankings had him as the sixth-best defenseman in the league, not just among those who are under 23. In that list, he’s also ahead of Schaefer, who lands in seventh place, while he’s third in Pronman’s ranking. Hutson also finished sixth in Norris Trophy voting last season, and the general expectation is that he will be a finalist soon. If you were to take Hutson away from the Canadiens, the impact would be disastrous, much more so than if you were to take away Slafkovsky or even Demidov.
Speaking of the two forwards, as things stand for me right now, Hutson is ahead of them both. I would even say that Demidov has got the upper hand on Slafkovsky. While the big Slovak put up more points last season and is a force to be reckoned with when he uses his speed and size, Demidov is the more consistent of the two for me. You know what you’re going to get when he’s on the ice, while Slafkovsky still has lulls when he forgets how to play the right way. When that happens, he still lands hits, but he does it without the speed necessary to create havoc, and he also tends to make those no-look backhand passes high in the offensive zone, which more often than not result in turnovers. We’ve seen those more times than Martin St-Louis would have liked in the playoffs.
It will be interesting to see how the three young players fare over the next few years and which of them ultimately has the best career. Still, ultimately, the thing to remember for Canadiens fans is that the Habs have three players in the top-11 of those rankings, meaning that things are definitely going according to plan for Hughes and co.
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