Lane Hutson signed an eight-year, $70.8 million contract with the Montreal Canadiens on Monday. It has an average annual value of $8.85 million and begins next season.
The 21-year-old defenseman could have been a restricted free agent after this season.
“Nice to get a good bit of business done,” Hutson said. “For me, it’s back to work and building my game. I think it’s good for both sides. I’m just happy to be here for a long time.”
Hutson was voted winner of the Calder Trophy last season, given to the NHL rookie of the year after his 66 points (six goals, 60 assists) in 82 games broke Chris Chelios‘ Canadiens record (64 in 1984-85) for most by a first-year defenseman. His 60 assists tied an NHL rookie record from a defenseman set by Larry Murphy in 1980-81 and he was Montreal’s second Calder winner in the expansion era (since 1967-68) after goalie Ken Dryden (1971-72).
“I had a conversation with Lane over the weekend and he had talked about his view on things,” Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes said. “It struck me he wanted to make sure we understood how much he wanted to be here and how hard he was going to work. I kind of cut him off and said, ‘Lane, there wouldn’t be an eight-year deal if we didn’t believe in who you were at your core.’ The kind of person he is, how committed he is to being his best version of himself, but also being the best version of a teammate.
“That’s important to us. One of the things that we’ve talked a lot about is trying to build a culture here and a culture where everybody’s pulling in the right direction, and that’s absolutely critical in my opinion.”
A second-round pick (No. 62) in the 2022 NHL Draft, Hutson has one assist in three games this season, and 69 points (six goals, 63 assists) in 87 regular-season games. He has five assists in five Stanley Cup Playoff games, when they lost the Eastern Conference First Round to the Washington Capitals, and helped the Canadiens make the postseason for the first time since they advanced to the 2021 Stanley Cup Final, a five-game loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“I think every time you get to throw on this jersey, it’s special, whether it’s practice, games, preseason, playoffs,” Hutson said. “It always means so much to me, and it’s pretty special I get to do it for a while now. I have belief that we aren’t far off from being a team that can be a Stanley Cup championship team, and not just once. Hopefully we continue to do it, but the belief I have in this group, the staff, coaches, everything we have in place, I think we’re heading in a great direction. I just really trust what we’re doing here.”
The Canadiens play their home opener against the Seattle Kraken at Bell Centre on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; RDS, TSN2, KONG, KHN) after going 2-1-0 on a season-opening three-game road trip.
“The reality is, if you go out into the open market, you’re going to have to pay,” Hughes said. “Our hope is that we’re able to build this team as much as possible internally, but if … when you have a young group of players that are committed to this team, I think we owe it to them that if we believe there’s a hole in the lineup that’s needed to be filled in order to have a championship-caliber team, then we’re going to have to do that.”
NHL.com columnist Nick Cotsonika contributed to this report
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