Lane Hutson

Last Season

Twelve goals and 66 assists in all 82 games for 78 points, plus-36, on 23:46 a night — more five-on-five ice time than any player on the roster. That is a season almost no defenceman his age has ever had.

The Finesse Game

The skating is not fast so much as impossible to pin. He has the best edges of any defenceman in the league: he escapes forecheckers by turning inside them in a space that does not look big enough, and he does it two or three times a game against players who know it is coming.

The passing is the other elite thing. He does not make the safe first pass; he makes the one that skips a layer of coverage, and he completes it at a rate that suggests it is not a gamble. On the power play he walks the line and manipulates penalty killers the way a forward would.

He shoots rarely and it does not matter — twelve goals arrived anyway, mostly from him sneaking into space nobody was covering.

The Physical Game

A hundred and sixty-two pounds. He cannot clear a crease, cannot win a wall battle against a grown winger, and gets moved out of the way in front of his own net by anyone who wants the space. There is no argument to be made here; it is simply the cost.

What he does instead is avoid the situations where that matters, using his feet and stick to end plays before contact is available.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick because every team worried about exactly what you can see, and one of the more remarkable young defencemen in the sport regardless. The plus-36 says the defensive side is working so far.

The honest uncertainty is what happens in a playoff series against a heavy team that hunts him. Nobody knows yet, and the answer will define how good this team can be.