Why Canadiens rookie Lane Hutson's Calder Trophy win is just the beginning

New York Times

3 days ago

Lane Hutson winning the Calder Trophy as the NHL's rookie of the year is easy to justify by looking at numbers on a screen. But his true value to the Montreal Canadiens can be found elsewhere: in the desire behind those numbers and his motivation for producing them.
It has nothing to do with the Calder Trophy. It has to do with another trophy.
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When Hutson was asked Tuesday what he's most proud of accomplishing in his rookie NHL season, the historic nature of his statistics did not come up.
'I think as a group, we fought to the end,' Hutson said, 'we fought to Game 82 and got into a playoff spot.'
It was appropriate that Hutson, on June 10, was speaking to the media from a hockey rink, with a row of sticks to his right and a nondescript cinder block wall typical of a dressing room as a Zoom background. He was in Boston for the Bauer Combine, trying out new sticks and gear for next season.
It was appropriate because Hutson spent just about every day this season in a hockey rink. On the days the Canadiens were off, he would go to the team's suburban training facility and get a skate in, work on a few things on his own and go home.
Largely, he explained during the season, it was because he had nothing better to do.
'I don't really have hobbies,' he said.
But that's not the whole story. The truth is, Hutson has a constant desire to improve, and he loves playing hockey, as evidenced by his first answer when asked how it felt to win the Calder.
'I'm just fortunate that I get to play for the Montreal Canadiens and do what I love every day and just taking it day by day,' he said.
Hutson overwhelmingly won the Calder vote with 165 of the 191 first-place votes and finished second on the remaining 26 ballots. Of the 13 rookies to collect at least a fifth-place vote in balloting, Hutson, Logan Stankoven, Jackson Blake and Mackie Samoskevich were the only ones to play in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Among that group, Hutson easily had the biggest impact on his team qualifying for the postseason.
It was a brief exposure to playoff hockey, but it will stick with Hutson this offseason, leading into training camp in the fall. After the Canadiens were eliminated in five games by the Washington Capitals, Hutson reflected on how much he had grown from beginning to end.
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'I felt like a completely different player from the first (game) to the fifth one,' Hutson said on May 2. 'Having that confidence and kind of knowing what I can and can't do, just like the regular season early on. It was a cool adjustment to have, kind of knowing I can have an impact and help. But I think I have a lot left to learn in that department for sure.'
In other words, the series provided Hutson with information, and one of his superpowers is his ability to take information and use it to find solutions to barriers that might hold him back. He's done that as a smaller defenceman his entire hockey-playing life — finding ways to defend bigger, stronger players on the ice, finding ways to exploit holes and lapses in coverage from opposing teams, finding ways to use his brain as a weapon.
He entered his rookie season with two NHL games' worth of information to work off of, and when he referred to the adjustments he had to make early in the regular season, it is notable. The version of Hutson that played in the playoffs was completely different from the version of Hutson that began the regular season.
The early version saw every touch as an opportunity to attack, to make something happen and get the puck in the net. He didn't understand the flow of the NHL game or how attacking at this level can sometimes be more valuable and dangerous than being able to turn on a dime on your skates' edges.
'I think I started to understand the timing of things, how quickly things can happen and how each game will never be the same, what to prepare for, all that stuff,' he said Tuesday. 'Once you do it enough, you kind of get a feel for what's coming. But you've also got to be prepared for anything that can happen in a game.'
Hutson's rookie season produced historic numbers, yes, but more importantly, it provided information. Hutson will use that to get better this summer; no one should doubt that. But the rest of the NHL will also use that to better defend him, to make it more difficult for him to find those holes and lapses in coverage. It is a chess game every gifted young player has to go through in the NHL, and considering how important Hutson was this season to the Canadiens' success, it will be a focal point for his opponents all season, just as it was for Capitals coach Spencer Carbery in the playoffs.
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In the 552 five-on-five minutes the Canadiens played this season with Hutson and Nick Suzuki on the ice, the Canadiens outscored their opponents 40-19 and controlled 57.7 percent of the shot attempts, according to Natural Stat Trick. With them off the ice, the Canadiens were outscored 93-54 and controlled 44.45 percent of the shot attempts.
But it should also be noted that Hutson and Suzuki started 75.62 percent of their shifts together in the offensive zone, and despite that, gave up (slightly) more high-danger chances than they earned, and their expected goal percentage (52.51 percent) was much lower than their goals for percentage (67.8 percent).
So, there's room for improvement. And what drives Hutson to go to the rink on off days is that desire to improve and to win.
'I think just the feeling of winning hockey games and playing at the highest level and doing it in repeatable ways and doing it the right way, it kind of just drives me to want to help win and want to be a part of a winning culture,' Hutson said. 'That in itself is enough to kind of fuel what I need to do and what I feel all our guys try to do.'
A common refrain this season from Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis was that he would let 'Lane be Lane.' It's not that St. Louis never worked with Hutson on areas for improvement — quite the opposite. But St. Louis felt more than comfortable letting Hutson learn a lot of how the NHL works on his own, through trial and error. One of St. Louis' core beliefs is that a player's capacity for improvement is a skill unto itself, largely because he considered that to be his greatest skill as a Hall of Fame player himself.
It seems clear Hutson has a similar capacity for improvement, and while winning the Calder Trophy sets a high bar for his second NHL season, nothing Hutson has shown in his career to date would suggest he will fail to hit that bar or exceed it.
'I just want to keep learning and absorbing as much as I can and take what I learned from my first year and take it into next year,' he said.
Hutson is the first Canadiens player to win the Calder since Ken Dryden in 1972. To put that in context, Hutson's father, Rob, was born a few weeks before Dryden won the award.
Le dernier joueur du Tricolore à avoir gagné le Calder, Ken Dryden, passe le flambeau à Lane
The last Habs player to win the Calder, Ken Dryden, passes the torch to Lane #GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/rkD0AMYiPk
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) June 10, 2025
Next season, the Canadiens will have another strong Calder candidate in the lineup in Ivan Demidov, and Hutson is the president of the Ivan Demidov fan club.
'I think he's going to be a star,' Hutson said at the end of the season. 'Just the way he handles the puck in important situations and how calm and confident he is, you can't teach it. I think that has the makings of a star player. That's the hope. It'll be fun to see.'
Things are decidedly moving in the right direction in Montreal.