Hutson unfazed, rising to occasion for Canadiens ahead of Eastern 2nd Round

TAMPA -- With his nose sporting a couple of ugly blotches of dried blood, Lane Hutson looked like a young teenager who’d just been roughed up by the class bully.

Looks can be deceiving.

In the end, it was Hutson who helped beat up the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Eastern Conference First Round, maybe not physically, but in so many other ways, be it quick puck movements, stellar defensive play, and huge offensive moments when his Montreal Canadiens so badly needed him.

It was hockey’s version of death by 1,000 paper cuts, courtesy of the outstanding young defenseman.

And once the handshake line had finished after the Canadiens had eliminated the Lightning in the best-of-7 series with a 2-1 victory in Game 7 at Benchmark International Arena on Sunday, Hutson, looking much younger than the 22-year-old that he is, flashed a wide smile in the chaos of the celebratory Montreal dressing room.

“It was my first Game 7, so I didn’t really know what to expect,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “But to be on the right side of things, I’m really proud of this group. Tampa played great. It was just really good hockey to be part of.

“It was just really special.”

Much like he is.

The Lightning learned that the hard way. 

In the seven-game series, Hutson led the Canadiens in ice time in 27:23, tied for most points on the team with six (two goals, four assists) and tied for second in shots with 14, four behind forward Juraj Slafkovsky.

More importantly, he had his fingerprints on each and every one of Montreal’s four wins in the series, a trend he’ll be looking to extend when the Canadiens meet the Buffalo Sabres in the Eastern Conference Second Round starting with Game 1 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS, CBC).

In Game 1, he assisted on Slafkovsky’s overtime winner in Montreal’s 4-3 victory against the Lightning.

In Game 3, he assumed the role of overtime hero himself, hammering home a slap shot to give the Canadiens the 3-2 win.

In Game 5, Alexandre Texier broke a 2-2 tie in the third period for the eventual game-winner off a 160-foot pass from the defensive zone corner to the opposition blue line by Hutson that had the type of accuracy that Patrick Mahomes would be proud of.

And then, in Game 7, when it mattered most, he had the primary assist on Alex Newhook’s bank shot goal in the third period that would give Montreal the win and send them off to Buffalo.

Notice a common thread here?

The bigger the moment, the more Hutson rises to the occasion.

Martin St. Louis was known for doing the same. The Canadiens coach was a Lightning legend in his nearly 13 seasons with Tampa Bay from 2000-14, including helping them win the Stanley Cup in 2004. During his time with the team, he won the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player (2003-04), the Ted Lindsay Award as the most outstanding player in the NHL, as voted on by members of the NHLPA (2003-04), and the Art Ross Trophy as the scoring champion twice (2003-04, 2012-13).

With that resume, the 50-year-old was himself a difference-maker in his playing days. As such, what does he see that makes Hutson be one?

“I don’t know if there’s one thing,” St. Louis said. “I feel like he’s got such a high, high compete level and high, high intelligence.

“If something happens to him, like once, he learns from it quick and it doesn’t happen again. So, to me, he’s been a big part of our success. But, overall, I would say the thing that impresses me the most is his compete.”

The Lightning tried to play off that. They tried to grind him down, tried to crush him at every opportunity, tried to get in his way and in his face whenever they could to frustrate him. Didn't happen.

In the process, he showed an uncanny ability, like many of the elite defensemen do, to roll off the type of crushing hits forecheckers were consistently attempting to lay on him.

He's only 5-foot-9, 162 pounds, a skinny kid that you’d expect would be beaten and battered by opponents who are trying to target him. Yet somehow, someway, he manages to bounce off checks, slide off them, if not avoid them, yet another example of the vision and intelligence he has on the ice.

“Hey, I get hit, I get hit a lot,” he said. “You’ve just got to see the whole ice and know where everyone is, what’s going on, and calculate what plays there are to be made off of that.”

The Sabres, like the Lightning, are going to try to test him. Over and over again. Whether it affects him, well, easier said than done, as Buffalo captain Rasmus Dahlin well knows.

“It’s awesome to see,” Dahlin said of Hutson’s growth as a player. “He can play good hockey on both ends. He’s a small guy but he’s found a way to have good numbers or whatever it is.

“And then, offensively, he can create from nothing, which is pretty cool to see. And I’ve seen lately that he has a good shot too.”

Here's the thing: even with all this, he’s only scratching the surface of his potential.

Sure, the Holland, Michigan, native has put up some impressive numbers in his young career: 146 points (18 goals, 128 assists) in 166 regular-season games and the honor of being the recipient of the 2025 Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year.

But perhaps the most impressive aspect of Hutson when you talk to him is his ability, as St. Louis pointed out, to process information almost instantaneously, the way veterans almost twice his age do.

“You know, when the opposition breaks through, you can’t be broken,” he said when asked about the elevated level of playoff hockey. “You’ve got to understand they probably made a pretty high-end play to break you down, but you’ve just got to reset and keep playing no matter what the adversity.”

In Game 7 against Tampa Bay, the Canadiens kept playing, kept pushing, despite going without a shot on goal for 26:55, including the entire second period. It resulted in a Newhook goal, on an assist from Hutson, and, suddenly, they’re in the second round against the Sabres.

“It doesn’t get much better,” Hutson said.

He certainly is.

NHL.com senior director of editorial Shawn P. Roarke contributed to this report