Fantasy Hockey Feature: Lane Huston's instant star-level play

Since the start of the 2023-24 season, 182 defencemen have skated at least 1500 minutes. Just 12 of those 182 defencemen have averaged at least 2.0 points per 60 minutes, and one of them is his Montreal Canadiens rookie Lane Hutson. He is 1 of 7 defencemen to average at least 1.75 assists per 60 minutes, and this is that entire list: 

Over half of that list has won at least one Norris Trophy. Given all this, it’s worth going through his path as a prospect, the good and the bad of his young NHL career, and what it tells us about his long-term fantasy upside. 

Drafted at the end of the second round in the 2022 Draft, there was a wide array of opinions on Hutson as a prospect. The 2022 Elite Prospects Draft Guide had him rated 47th overall, or in the middle of the second round, and the same range as Bob McKenzie of TSN, who ranked Hutson 40th. Both Scott Wheeler and Corey Pronman of The Athletic were more optimistic, slotting him 19th and 24th overall, respectively, while Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News was less optimistic, with Hutson landing 58th on his board. Finally, the model at Hockey Prospecting had Hutson as 1 of 7 players in the 2022 Draft with at least a 50% chance of becoming a star: 

Three, maybe four, of the other six players are already NHL regulars. 

While nearly everyone agreed that Hutson was a tremendous, and deceptive, playmaking puck-carrier from the blue line, his skating was holding him back. Both his straight-line speed and his edgework were subpar so despite his agility, he wouldn’t win footraces for a loose puck and could easily get beat if a forward put a puck into space.  

Elite Prospects’ own Mitchell Brown tracked 14 of Hutson’s games with the US National Team Development Program and three things stuck out: a 90th percentile rate by shot assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 (assists on teammate shots) and 96th percentile marks by both zone exit and entry rates. We will return to the skating and tracking data in a minute. 

Hutson spent the 2022-23 season with Boston University where he led all Hockey East skaters – not just defencemen, and not just rookies – with 34 points. His sophomore season saw him post 34 points again, leading all defencemen by 13 points. He was certainly showing that propensity for offensive production again, and after completing his second NCAA season, he played a couple of games with Montreal at the end of the 2023-24 campaign. Those two games showed both the good and the bad we’ve discussed. 

For the good, here we see Hutson get a pass from his defence partner, walk all the way across the blue line, quickly hesitate to briefly put the defender off-balance, and get a shot on net which leads directly to a goal: 

In the second game, we have an example of his lack of straight-line speed costing him a puck battle, and leading directly to a goal against: 

Everything that could encapsulate what made Hutson both an exciting and a nerve-wracking prospect is summed up in those 20 seconds. 

Montreal lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins early in the 2024-25 season, and Hutson was on the ice for three goals against at 5-on-5. The second goal against shows the explosiveness issue as there is a loose puck and Evgeni Malkin blows past him to get there first, and the puck is in the net a few seconds later: 

There is good news though, and it’s that after looking at all of Hutson’s goals against at 5-on-5 this season, there have been none since February 1st that can be attributed directly to skating issues like the goals above. Any goals against which he can be assigned blame are things like bad pinches or losing body position. Goals against are never ideal, but that the skating-related goals against have been cut down over the last couple of months is a good sign. 

In fact, there have even been recent instances where his explosiveness has been a strength. Here, in early March, a puck squirts loose in the defensive zone, and he blows past Zach Benson to lead the attack. After hesitating at the blue line, he passes off and the puck is in the net a couple of seconds later: 

Those types of plays have been very common for Hutson this season. When looking through tracking data from AllThreeZones, there are three defencemen with at least 200 tracked minutes that fit the following parameters at 5-on-5: 

• Above-average rate of defensive zone retrievals
• Fewer than 20% of zone exits are failures (including botched retrievals)
• More than 80% of zone exits are successes 
• Above-average rate of offensive zone entries
• At least 50% of zone entries are carried in

These are those three defencemen: 

Additionally, Hutson’s denials of the defensive blue line to opposing zone entries is the second-highest rate among Montreal defencemen (Alex Carrier is higher). His 12.7% entry zone denial rate is 37% higher than the league-average defenceman and in the 81st percentile of all regular blue liners. 

Finally, while Hutson has gotten a lot of production from the power play – 43% of his points – that also undersells what he’s done otherwise. He has 26 assists at even strength, needing two more the rest of the season to post the highest even-strength assist total from a rookie defenceman in over 30 years.  

The last time we saw a rookie rearguard look anything like this was Quinn Hughes. While Hutson has been put in a position to produce, and he does have deficiencies to work on, his fantasy hockey upside is extremely high. Montreal’s top forwards are all between 20- and 26-years-old, the depth is improving, and Hutson is clearly their top puck-mover. It will take a few years for him to round out his real-life game, but in the fantasy realm, he has point-per-game status in his sights sooner rather than later.  

*Additional stats from Natural Stat Trick and NHL.com