Hutson unfazed by pressure, leads Canadiens back into wild-card spot
To Lane Hutson, the pressure of the playoff chase is “pretty fun.” That maturity and level-headedness was on display as he guided the Canadiens in Sunday’s must-win game against the Panthers, Eric Engels writes.
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SUNRISE, Fla. — There’s less than four minutes to go in a game the Florida Panthers are chasing when Sam Bennett, Brad Marchand and Mackie Samoskevich hop over the boards. Two minutes earlier, they had created a turbine in Montreal’s zone that led to four suppressed shot attempts but still seized momentum from the Canadiens, and they were being put on again to capitalize on it.
The pressure was on, but Lane Hutson was ready to handle it.
As the puck rimmed around the boards and found its way to Bennett below the goal in Montreal’s end, Hutson corkscrewed it loose with his stick. Then he pushed his way through a pick to keep Bennett from getting a look in front of Montreal’s net. And it was towards the end of the sequence that he stepped up on Marchand in the slot and eliminated one of Florida’s better chances to tie the game.
Seconds later, Brendan Gallagher scored the empty-net goal that secured the 4-2 win for the Canadiens.
The stress subsided for Gallagher, and for most of his other teammates, right then, as a five-game losing streak was well on its way to being halted, and footing in the Eastern Conference wild-card race was about to be regained.
If Hutson was ever feeling the stress of the situation, he showed no signs of it.
The Canadiens had first placed themselves in the second wild-card spot in the East with a 6-3 win over the Ottawa Senators on Mar. 18, and the pressure of finally playing with something to lose wrapped its hands around their throats and started squeezing.
They fought against it with an overtime loss to the New York Islanders and then a shootout loss to the Colorado Avalanche, but they began losing their breath on this four-game trip — that began in St. Louis and took them through Philadelphia and Carolina — and they didn’t catch it again until just before it ended in South Florida.
Juraj Slafkovsky, who celebrated his 21st birthday Sunday with a goal and an assist in the win, talked about that suffocating feeling.
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“All of Montreal has been watching us and wanting us to make the playoffs,” he said. “We’ve all been feeling it here. Everyone wants to make it, and sometimes it makes it even harder because sometimes, when you want something too much, you focus on the wrong thing and it goes the other way.”
It was normal to see most of the Canadiens fall into that trap.
That a 21-year-old rookie like Hutson never did speaks to what makes him special, and it said as much about his maturity as those late-game defensive plays he made on Sunday did.
“Honestly, it’s pretty special and pretty cool that we’re in the position we’re in,” Hutson said after a 6-4 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers followed a 6-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues and precipitated a 4-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes to make the game against the Panthers a must-win. “I think just having that pressure and knowing that each play you make is huge and can have a huge impact on the game, it’s pretty fun.”
What’s stifling for most players is “pretty fun” for Hutson because, as Nick Suzuki said after Sunday’s game, Hutson is “an elite player.”
“Elite players always rise to occasions, and I feel he’s probably done that his whole life,” said Suzuki, who’s also been an elite player for most of his life. “Big games don’t really get in his head. He just goes out there and does whatever he can to help the team.”
It’s what Hutson has done all season, leading to the most prolific one a rookie defenceman has had in three-and-a-half decades.
If the Chicago native hadn’t come into this road trip as the lead contender to win a razor-thin Calder Trophy race with Dustin Wolf, Macklin Celebrini and Matvei Michkov, he had certainly come out of it as such — registering assists on six of the 10 goals Montreal scored while leading the Canadiens in ice-time with an average 25:07 per game.
Helping revive Montreal’s previously dormant power play, which had gone 0-for-10 before going two-for-three against Florida, did more than just “help the team.” And what Hutson did without the puck on his stick was just as essential.
It’s what he did all game and what he’s done all season.
“He fights like a dog out there,” said Slafkovsky. “He doesn’t want to lose any battle. He’s pissed off when he loses them, and it makes him even more angry to go out and win more battles. He just makes great play after great play.
“A lot of people may just appreciate his o-zone game, but he’s making these plays all over the ice, and that’s great for us.”
The way Hutson does it amazes partner Kaiden Guhle.
“I’ve never really seen anything like it,” Guhle said. “He seems like he’s got eyes in the back of his head all over the ice. And in our zone, yeah, he’s a smaller guy, but he gets on the right side of guys and is just so sneaky with his stick. He gets in guys’ blind spots. He’s sneaky, quiet, and I don’t think guys feel where he’s at before he gets in behind them and gets his stick in there and pokes it away.”
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The way Hutson did that under the type of unique pressure Cup winners Bennett and Marchand can apply together was special. Especially with the game on the line and the Canadiens desperate to win.
But handling pressure is what we’ve come to expect from Hutson.
“I think he’s always done that,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis. “I think he’s always had the magnifying glass over him. I think he was an elite player coming up when he was young, world juniors, college, obviously drafted, very talented. (People wondered) Can he play at this level? Can he defend? I think he’s just trying to be writing his own story; I don’t think he’s been worried about what anybody’s saying about him. And I think he’s having fun out there.”
We know Hutson will continue to do that, even with the pressure ratcheting up with each passing game.
With nine of them left, the Canadiens are hoping to rise above it.
“You can’t be scared to fail,” said St. Louis. “You’ve got to be hungry to succeed, and I think that’s what we want to be.”
