Welcome to Across The Border, where we keep an eye on the Montreal Canadiens’ USHL/NCAA prospects and how their development is progressing.
As November rolls on and sample sizes increase, the off-season growth of some prospects begins to concretize. Their improvements turn into in-game staples, and affect their outcome and projections in interesting ways.
So far, there are four prospects in the Habs’ North American system for whom this is the case; Lane Hutson, Jacob Fowler, Filip Mešár and Cédrick Guindon. We’ll be discussing the two NCAA prospects below, and follow up with a Catching The Torch article on the two OHL prospects next week.
Let’s start with the most exciting prospect in the Habs’ pipeline.
Lane Hutson
Closing the size gap
The development objective with Hutson was always very clear. He wasn’t going to need much help translating his skill set and hockey sense to the NHL game. Instead, his post-draft progression relied upon his ability to learn how to compensate for his lack of size, which set him back in two ways. Firstly, and most evidently, Hutson struggled to make plays inside contact when pressured or leaned on by a bigger opponent.
We have already seen some major progress in this area.
In this clip, we see a 6-foot-2, 190-pound forward, 21-year-old Jimmy Doyle, try to outwork Hutson to a loose puck for a short-handed break. As Hutson spots Doyle’s stick to his right, he identifies that Doyle’s chest must be right on his back. Hutson anchors his left leg and uses the outside edge of his right skate to throw his low centre of gravity upward, pushing Doyle’s chest and stick backward. This motion frees up Hutson for a split second, which he uses to throw a pinpoint spin pass on his teammate’s stick to keep the play alive on the power-play.
These improvements were more of a secondary initiative last year; Hutson’s key task and focus was to adapt to the level of competition in the NCAA. Now that he’s become one of the best players in the league, he can focus on incorporating these elements into his play on a nightly basis.
The other way Hutson’s size deficiency shows up in his game is his lack of reach when defending, whether that be off the rush or in his own zone. Unfortunately, that’s still a work in progress.
The main reason this hurdle is and will continue to be the most difficult to overcome for Hutson is the fact that it isn’t just a matter of size. His defensive skating also plays a major part in his shortcomings when defending the rush. His brain is all there, but his feet and his body can’t keep up. Deepening his pivots, digging deeper into his outside edges on those turns and stops would go a long way.
Worse skaters than Hutson end up being defensive stalwarts in the NHL due to the fact that their reach does 90% of the work for them. Hutson doesn’t have that advantage. In order to become a net-positive NHL defender, he will need to fine-tune his defensive skating.
Still, Hutson continues to impress. His ankle-breaking abilities are just mesmerizing. Even his teammates can get caught up in watching him go about it and forget their assignments.
While earning the most ice time on a stacked Boston University team by a full six minutes, Hutson is up to 14 points in 11 games, and hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down offensively, especially given the chemistry he has developed with top 2024 NHL Draft prospect Macklin Celebrini. The diminutive defenceman continues to show why he is the best and most exciting prospect the Canadiens have.
Jacob Fowler
Positional perfection
Fowler’s start with Boston College almost earned him the Player of the Month for October among North American prospects, but I opted instead for Cedrick Guindon due to Fowler not having played enough games and only having faced more than 30 shots once to that point.
However, his performances in November so far have allowed him to shine and, more importantly, display the tweaks in his game that have allowed him to become a key part of a stacked Boston College team.
To put it simply, I don’t think I’ve seen Fowler have to make a single difficult save this season. It’s almost boring how positionally sound he is. Fowler’s puck-tracking and hockey sense are off the charts.
Former Eyes On The Prize managing editor Marc Dumont put it well. Nothing fancy, just efficient. It’s been the case all year, and it was easy to chalk it up to having a strong team in front of him last month. However, with a larger sample size and higher shot volume in recent games, it’s apparent that Fowler’s abilities are the cause of this, not his teammates.
This change in style really benefits Fowler’s game. Last year, he was trying his hardest on every shot, pushing up to the top of the paint on every attempt and scrambling on rebounds. Although he has great reflexes and reads, which bailed him out in these situations more than once, his skating was and still is a weakness. His edgework is heavy, and his lateral pushes are hard to control.
In last year’s style, this held him back from getting to the right spots for second or third saves. In his current style, Fowler doesn’t need his skating as much. He is leveraging his strengths — positional awareness, technical soundness, and puck-tracking — while offsetting his biggest weakness by always staying square and deep.
As it stands, as good as Hutson has been, Fowler is setting himself up to be the Player of the Month for November, especially when taking into account his .932 save percentage on almost 200 shots faced in six games so far.
Thanks for reading — follow me on Twitter @HadiK_Scouting for more prospects-related content, and to keep up with the rest of my work!
