Canadiens weekly notebook: Lane Hutson’s defensive game, Nick Suzuki’s Olympic competition

The Montreal Canadiens salvaged their four-game road trip with an excellent performance Sunday afternoon in Sunrise, winning their third straight game this season against the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers, with a chance to complete a sweep of the season series Tuesday at Bell Centre.

The Canadiens’ best players in the 4-2 win were Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovský, but on the road trip as a whole, it was undoubtedly Lane Hutson. And he was right there with the top line in this game.

It honestly seems silly at this point that there was ever any doubt Hutson would be able to compete at the NHL level, that he would bring his level of dominance at the NCAA, junior and minor hockey levels to this level.

Hutson has never, his entire hockey-playing life, failed to level up.

But of all the incredible things we saw Hutson do over this road trip, two stand out to me, because they have nothing to do with his offensive performance. They are defensive, in two different ways that are typical of how Hutson plays defence. He is innovative in his defensive game, adapting it to his size and the size of his opponents, something he has had to do his whole life and has learned to do over the course of his rookie NHL season.

But first, let’s touch on the historic level of offence.

Hutson had three assists against the Panthers on Sunday, bringing his season total to 54, the third most in NHL history for a rookie defenceman in one season. His next assist will tie Chris Chelios for second all-time and first in franchise history, and he needs six more to match Larry Murphy for the most in NHL history with nine games left to play.

His offence is historic. But that’s not all there is.

“Many people just look at his assists or goals or whatever, but he does a lot of great stuff in our own zone,” Slafkovský said after the win on Sunday. “He wins so many battles, and when he doesn’t get one or two he gets even more angry and tries to win even more so. He’s valuable all over the ice.”

So, back to those two Hutson plays that stood out heading into the game against Florida.

The first came Tuesday night in St. Louis, a 6-1 beating at the hands of the unbeatable Blues. But at one point, midway through the first period of that game, Blues forward Alexey Toropchenko — all 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds of him — was making his way into the Canadiens zone with Hutson defending the entry. Hutson angled Toropchenko toward the boards, forced him to reverse course, and once he did, Hutson leveraged his lower centre of gravity to muscle him off the puck and get the puck out of the zone.

Toropchenko has nine inches and 60 pounds on Hutson, and you would never know it watching this.

Then there was this in Philadelphia, with an initial entry denial on Bobby Brink that wasn’t exactly textbook, but it worked. But then, Hutson stayed with Brink as he attempted to engineer a reload in the neutral zone. Yeah, that didn’t work either.

And then in Florida, amid all the offensive impacts he was making, there were plenty of defensive moments for Hutson to shine against some pretty difficult competition.

There was this entry denial on Carter Verhaeghe off the rush midway through the first period, about as smooth as you can do it.

There was this, late in the second period, when Hutson headed into the corner in his own zone with Sam Reinhart and Reinhart was left wondering how that died so quickly.

And then this against Aleksander Barkov in the third period. Again, the puck makes its way into that same corner in his defensive zone, and Hutson needs to go in there against Barkov, who is six inches taller and 52 pounds heavier. Similar to how he handled the Toropchenko situation in St. Louis, Hutson actively avoids a battle and uses his guile and stick to try to outsmart his opponent. It didn’t quite work as cleanly as it did against Toropchenko, but it worked, and it is something Hutson does consistently.

He uses his brain to win board battles because he knows he won’t be able to win them with his brawn.

The notion that Hutson can’t play defence has become embarrassing for anyone trying to make that argument. In other words, tell me you haven’t watched Hutson play without telling me you haven’t watched Hutson play.

Does Hutson ever get beat defensively? Of course he does. Does he turn pucks over occasionally that lead to scoring chances for the opposing team? Yes, though far less frequently than he did at the beginning of the season. Does Hutson win more than his fair share of battles in the defensive zone, regardless of his size? He absolutely does.

This is a list of NHL defencemen who have played at least 200 minutes at five-on-five and have been on the ice for the most expected goals for their respective teams since the return from the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Hutson is fifth in on-ice expected goals for, but look at the expected goals-against and actual goals-against columns among these defencemen.

You surely noticed, but Hutson is the only rookie on that list. And the idea that his offence comes at the expense of his defence, an argument that could have been legitimately made in November, is no longer valid.

A more valid argument to make right now is that Hutson is already the Canadiens’ best player. You would get some legitimate pushback on that from people making an argument for Suzuki, but that is a far better argument than the one that suggests Hutson plays no defence. Because that one is simply not true, and the one about Hutson being the Canadiens’ best player at least has some evidence to back it up over the last five weeks.

The eye test vs. the numbers

The Canadiens are purely about the present right now, but Sunday’s game might have given us a glimpse of the future that can also benefit the present.

Emil Heineman had his most impactful game in weeks, playing alongside Alex Newhook and Patrik Laine. Or at least it looked that way. The line’s underlying numbers were terrible.

NHL GameScore Impact Card for Montreal Canadiens on 2025-03-30: pic.twitter.com/Y6wGKT6oEe

— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) March 30, 2025

But that didn’t match the eye test, which seemed to suggest the infusion of Heineman’s speed next to that of Newhook made for an effective combination.

At the very least, it made Heineman much more noticeable, and it seemed to make Newhook’s speed more effective because he had someone next to him who could support it. And Laine could, at least in theory if not in practice right away, drift in beneath that speed and find soft areas of the ice to benefit from the forecheck of his two speedy linemates.

The change seemed to work, even if the numbers suggested it didn’t. And from a big-picture perspective, a third line built around Newhook and Heineman next season could be a very real thing for the Canadiens, depending on how successful their offseason is.

Might as well give that a trial run right now, especially if it gets the best out of Heineman.

Underlying numbers tend to ring true over a large sample of games. If Martin St. Louis decides this is a combination worth keeping, we’re willing to bet those numbers will start looking better over time.

Remaining schedule looks favourable

Getting this four-game road trip out of the way leaves the Canadiens with six home games in their final nine games and, according to Tankathon, the fifth-easiest remaining schedule in the NHL.

The Canadiens are 18-12-5 at Bell Centre this season, so the home-heavy remainder of the schedule should help. Playing four current playoff teams in their final nine games should help as well.

Tankathon also has the Canadiens’ four primary challengers for that final wild-card spot in the East among the top eight in terms of strength of schedule: the Detroit Red Wings are first at .612, the New York Rangers are second at .579, and the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Islanders are tied for seventh at .568.

A reminder that the Rangers have the advantage over everyone in the race in the first tiebreak with 32 regulation wins, and no one is even close to that number. So if the Rangers start winning, they will be tough to beat. But otherwise, conditions seem to be in the Canadiens’ favour. They just need to take care of their own business.

An Olympic showdown that goes back a ways

The Canadiens’ matchup with the Blues last Tuesday was not only a showdown between two of the hottest teams in the NHL at the time, it was also a showdown between two players who are likely competing for the same spot on the Canadian Olympic team a year from now in Italy.

Suzuki and Robert Thomas were each left off Team Canada for the 4 Nations, and each of them had a strong case to be included. Since returning from the break for a tournament they each felt they should have played in, Suzuki and Thomas have been on fire.

Suzuki and Thomas are each right-shot centres. They each play a 200-foot game and could conceivably fill a defensive role or even play on the wing.

They are similar in many ways.

Blues assistant coach Claude Julien has coached them both, and he immediately agreed.

“They’re extremely similar,” he said last Tuesday morning. “They basically play the same role on each team. Neither of them are real explosive skaters. They’re good skaters but they won’t blow you away with their speed. But it’s their vision, the way they see the game, they’re very cerebral players.”

We spoke to Thomas about this and he also agreed. He’s been competing with Suzuki since the two of them were teenagers. They would cross paths at tournaments in Ontario playing minor hockey, and Thomas was always aware of Suzuki, even if he didn’t face him that often.

“I didn’t get to see him too much, but I always heard about him,” Thomas said. “Especially at tournaments, you stay and watch games. I think we played against each other only a couple of times, but I always heard about him, he’s always been a smart player. It was mostly in junior that I got to know him. He was in Owen Sound and I was in London, so we were big rivals and I got to know him well.”

Now, all these years later, he’s still competing with him, this time potentially for a trip to the Olympics.

“Yeah, definitely,” Thomas said. “You look at the (Canadian 4 Nations) team, they had a lot of lefty centremen, we’re a couple of righty centremen. There’s something there maybe. But yeah, I’m used to competing with Nick, we’ve been battling since we were 13 or 14 and then in juniors. I have a ton of respect for him, and he’s obviously done a great job picking this team up, especially after the break.

“It’s funny how you go from competing with him as a kid, and now you’re still doing it. And I’ll be doing it for the rest of my career. It’s pretty cool.”

Considering how long Thomas has at least had an eye on Suzuki, he is well placed to contrast the player Suzuki was back then with the player he is today.

“Same player he is now, even as a kid,” Thomas said. “He was literally the same person he is now, like his impact on the game, it was pretty much the same. It’s pretty impressive.”

That is what you call consistency.

A window into St. Louis’ podcast habits?

After the Canadiens lost that game to the Blues 6-1, St. Louis pulled out another quote he had heard recently. He does this often.

“I heard this saying the other day — it’s not failure tonight,” St. Louis said that night. “To me, it’s fertilizer. That’s what it needs to be.”

So, that was the evening of March 25.

On March 19, there was an episode of the “Quote of the Day” Podcast titled “Rick Pitino: Failure is Fertilizer.”

The episode was basically the audio of a speech given by NCAA college basketball coaching legend Rick Pitino in which he talked about failure needing to be fertilizer for future growth. Pitino gave the speech in 2015 at the 86th National FFA Convention & Expo, with FFA standing for Future Farmers of America.

He talked about entering the NCAA tournament in 2011 when he was coaching at Louisville as the No. 4 seed and losing in the first round to Moorhead State on a late 3-pointer after his best player had been injured.

The loss led Pitino to consider leaving coaching for a job in broadcasting.

“I’ll go into something else because of failure,” Pitino said. “All of you are going to fail. How do you treat failure? Failure is fertilizer, to help future things grow in your lifetime. Don’t worry about the adversity. Handle it with courage. It’s fertilizer. You are going to fail, but you must learn from it and grow even better from it.”

It’s somewhat ironic that St. Louis referred to that quote three days after Pitino was again upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament, this time as coach of No. 2 seed St. John’s University losing to No. 15 seed Arkansas, coached by John Calipari.

Regardless, it can’t be a coincidence that St. Louis referred to this quote only six days after it was featured on the “Quote of the Day” Podcast.

Have we found the source of his Martyisms?

(Photo of Lane Hutson defending against Florida’s Mackie Samoskevich: Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)