- Apr 27, 2005
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He's not a great defender by any means but he could be much worse.
Context matters, you're right. Quoting raw +/- in the age of EN goals is crazy misleading. Look at Hutson's 5v5 goal differential - he's only -1.
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5v5 excludes not just EN goals, but 3v3, 4v4 and SH ones. And if you let in goals in all those situations, it's still not very good, maybe even worse than 5v5 goals.
Grate n Colorful Oz
Pure Laine Hutson
-9 of his -10 is from empty net situations. Even if you bring up 4v4, 3v3, it doesn't change the fact he spends the great majority of his minutes at 5v5 and he's only -1 at 5v5.
Go hide away in shame.
- Apr 27, 2005
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He's -9 in empty net situations. So being -10 really isn't that bad, agreed?
Karlsson the year he hit 101 points was even at 5 on 5, he was though -22 with an empty net. He had 74 even strength points and 27 power play points.
Bouboumaster
Registered User
- Jul 4, 2014
- 11,350
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Hutson make goals happening, and help his team winning, unlike Mitchkov and Celebrini, who play for bottom feeders
Tell me you haven't watched a single Hutson game without telling me hahaha.
Seriously this guy's posts in the last pages are hilarious.
Grate n Colorful Oz
Pure Laine Hutson
NHL should amend the stat collumn for +/- and stop including EN situations. +/- was already a stat that needed a lot of proper context to have any relevance, but now with the rise of EN goals, the +/- collumn has become even more misleading and in need of even more context.
StrawHatEklund
Registered User
Celebrini hasn’t even played 40 games and he’s also on the worst team in the league that’s so bad they blow 5-1 leads.
StrawHatEklund
Registered User
Much more but he’s also scoring at a good rate for 38 games as a rookie on the worst team in the league with a mediocre PP and often being paired with 3rd liner NHL talent (even 4th liner in some instances) at 5 vs 5.
- Apr 27, 2005
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100% agreed, its pretty much a useless statistic now when comparing +/- amongst top players commonly used in those situations.
JustAHabFan
Registered User
- Apr 8, 2008
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N
Agreed. When the Habs were behind or tie, Hutson usually the spark plug to allow the Habs to score the next goal to either narrow the other team lead or tie the game or to go ahead.
Galaxydoggystyle
Registered User
- Jul 4, 2019
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People are actually using +/- to discredit Hutson? thats how low people will go to try and make a player look bad? LOL
Goalfield13
In Bilbo We Trust
- Aug 31, 2021
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JustAHabFan
Registered User
- Apr 8, 2008
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Mitchkov and Celebrini fans are desperate to the point of using +/- and numbers of goal scored to demonize Hutson. For me the biggest quality of Hutson is his competitiveness. You have to watch him to understand how he win games for the Habs.
Doom Bot
Registered User
- Aug 30, 2024
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Lol there was a shift last night where Hutson stole it from Kucherov 3 seperate times in the Habs end and then Matheson turned it over and took a penalty immediately. It's hard to believe but Hutson has been babysitting Matheson for a while now who can be an absolute disaster sometimes.
Tbf the only way a guy his size can be a full-time player in the league is if he's competitive.
Lafleurs Guy
Guuuuuuuy!
- Jul 20, 2007
- 80,709
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I can't believe there are still people trying to argue Hutson can't play D. All you're doing is proving that you aren't watching his games.
Lafleurs Guy
Guuuuuuuy!
- Jul 20, 2007
- 80,709
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Hutson is significantly better than Matheson in all areas except skating. Matheson's skating is absolutely awesome.
- Apr 27, 2005
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I think it's fair to say it's not a strength of his game (and that it probably never will be), but his overall game has been a lot better than some people seem to think, especially in the last 6-8 weeks. He's certainly proving he has the ability to play on a top defensive pair alongside a strong skating partner.
Some of the underrating of his defensive play is probably due to the fact that he was really not good defensively in the first 2 months of the season. That likely anchored some poster's opinions early on, but I don't know what people expected from a smaller rookie OFD.
In addition to getting better at picking his spots, I think a lot of his improvement comes from his teammates adapting to his tendencies (and getting away from a sluggish Savard). Hutson is a very unique player stylistically, which I could imagine takes some getting used to. But Montreal forwards seem much more aware that Hutson might pinch below the dots for sustained periods of time, and that good things often come from that so long as they cover for him (which they have done much better lately than they were doing earlier in the year)
With the way he's been utilized within Montreal's system recently, he's played like a top 10-20 dman in the league. Crazy impressive for a rookie dman.
The US is turning into quite the factory for defenseman - look at the depth of U26 dman in the league:
Hughes x2
Hutson
Faber
Vlasic
Sanderson
York
Miller
Lacombe
Kesselring
Lohrei
Samuelsson
Plus they have the following guys in the wings:
Casey
C Hutson
Buium
Rinzel
Chesley
My favorite argument used by Sharks fans is the quality of teammates that each guy gets to play with. Yes, Hutson plays with more skilled players, enabling his point production. He also is on a pairing with one of the WORST defenders in the league. So if you're going to use his quality of teammate against him in his offensive production, you better be willing to admit that his D partner is not very good at D, and that a lot of Hutson's defensive struggles can be attributed to playing with Matheson. If Weber were still here, for example, Hutson would be playing with him, and his defensive play would look a lot better.
- Jul 25, 2007
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To be fair, this is not a "Sharks fan" argument. This is a bad argument used by fans of many teams throughout this thread, and used poorly. For example, earlier on, Michkov fans were arguing that Michkov was putting up his numbers with 3rd line talent while Celebrini had 1st line talent, but doesn't that mean Michkov is getting easier competition and Celebrini is getting harder competition, but then again... around and around in circles. Even you, hinting that Hutson's defensive struggles are Matheson's fault, are kind of saying the same thing.
A better way to try to assess this would be to look at underlying stats (quality of teammates vs quality of opposition, zone starts, etc) rather than just arguing out your ass, but then again, arguing out your ass is easier.
