As the NHL regular season paused on February 9 for the inaugural 4 Nations Face-Off, Martin St-Louis had a problem. A serious injury to Kaiden Guhle on January 29 had destroyed the blue-line top four that had driven much of the Montreal Canadiens’ success since early December.
Lane Hutson may have been weaned into the NHL by David Savard, but his ascent to the Calder Trophy favourite started when he was placed with Mike Matheson in late November. Hutson put up 29 points in the 34 games between that point and the 4 Nations break. Meanwhile, Alexandre Carrier arrived from the Nashville Predators two weeks later, and instantly found chemistry with Guhle to form an effective shutdown unit that allowed Hutson and Matheson to flourish.
After a woeful start, the Canadiens had, against all odds, pulled themselves into the playoff picture over the previous two months. In fact, the Habs had actually found themselves in a wild-card position as recently as January 21. Yet a mere 19 days later, after eight losses in nine matches, the post-season looked to be as ephemeral as a mirage in the desert sands. The Canadiens sat six points behind the Detroit Red Wings for that eighth position in the Eastern Conference, with four other clubs between them.
Guhle’s injury created a dilemma. If St-Louis kept Hutson and Matheson together, he would need to find a pairing capable of absorbing the same defensive burden as Guhle-Carrier. If he broke up the top pair to help Carrier, he would be eliminating his biggest source of offence from the blue line. In the six-game run-in to the 4 Nations break after Guhle’s departure, the head coach tried just about every combination available to him: Hutson played two games with Matheson and one each with Carrier, Arber Xhekaj, Logan Mailloux, and Jayden Struble. Carrier played three times with Matheson and once each with Xhekaj, Struble, and Savard.
Amusingly, the combination that would end up sticking was only attempted once, in the final game before the break against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Deploying pairings of Matheson-Carrier and Struble-Hutson, the Canadiens played remarkably well and were unlucky to not come away with at least a point in a 5-3 defeat.
The effort was enough to earn the quartet a second audition coming out of the break, but with an added wrinkle. In the loss to the Lightning, the Matheson-Carrier pair had played in all three zones, with Hutson receiving secondary priority for offensive-zone starts. Now, against the Ottawa Senators, Hutson and Struble would focus on offence, while Matheson and Carrier were used as the shutdown pair; no other Canadiens defenceman started a shift in the defensive zone in that game.
Through this deployment, St-Louis bet on two things. First, that Matheson, not a shutdown defender by any means, would learn enough on the fly to absorb the hard minutes. This would both shelter the third pairing and free up Hutson to do what he did best. Second, that Hutson, with all of 59 NHL games under his belt, would be able to seize the bull by the horns and find another level beyond just being an impressive rookie.
To say that Hutson fulfilled his end of the bargain would be an understatement. Powered by a 75% offensive-zone-start rate (compared to 61% prior), the Canadiens’ blue-line wunderkind erupted out of the break with seven points in six games, eventually finishing the stretch run with 25 in 26, a +18 rating, and a 55% expected-goal share (xGF%) at five-on-five (compared to 49% prior). Releasing Hutson’s limiters was so successful that when Guhle returned on March 28, he moved to the first pairing due to his similarities with Struble’s playstyle rather than reunite with Carrier in his old shutdown role.
Matheson’s performance, unsurprisingly, was more mixed. Saddled with a 29% defensive-zone-start rate and often logging in excess of 25 minutes a night, the pairing struggled to tread water. Matheson saw large hits to his possession (41% xGF compared to 47% prior) and personal (six points in 26 games) numbers. He often looked awkward and ragged on the ice, getting hemmed in for extended periods of time and making high-visibility errors.
But he and Carrier got the job done. At five-on-five in the 26 games down the stretch, Matheson salvaged a -5 goal differential, making for a net value of +13 when combined with Hutson’s +18. The Matheson-Carrier pairing also successfully insulated the rest of the blue line: Savard’s -3 result represented a considerable improvement on the -12 mark he accrued during the 50 other games of the season. Struble moved from -11 (in 30 games) to +11 (in 26), Guhle from -4 (44) to 0 (11), while Xhekaj stayed roughly level (-8 in 53 to -5 in 17).
Ironically, the present best course of action for St-Louis might be to break up the pairings that got him to the playoffs for the post-season itself. With matchups at more of a premium, returning to Hutson-Matheson and Guhle-Carrier gives the opposition fewer opportunities to exploit a defenceman playing out of his comfort zone.
During a time when the Canadiens needed some way to salvage their playoff ambitions, St-Louis bet on a diminutive 21-year-old rookie. To give Hutson’s elite skill an opportunity to blossom, the head coach pushed a veteran into an uncomfortable position. Yet in hindsight, Matheson was the only one available with both the versatility and durability necessary to take on and grow into that particular role. The head coach recognized a way to potentially leverage the unique strengths of his roster while masking the weaknesses, and his gamble paid off with his first NHL post-season appearance as a head coach.
