Everybody is double dosing on hopium that Hutson will lead our PP to the promised land.
Meanwhile...
Mailman is the 4th highest scoring defenseman in the AHL.
I've been very high on both from the start, I had Hutson ranked 1st and Mailloux 3rd behind Roy. I've had Mailloux at the top before but this was the first time since watching Hutson that I started to wonder if I got it wrong and should have put Mailloux over him as Hutson is more skilled and I think he is better defensively at least in terms of IQ but it's going to be a tough task to be a top pairing blueliner in say 5 years, if he doesn't add some weight, strength and work on his pivots more as he lacks power in a major way but is so smart and shifty.
While Mailloux has clearly has some issues in his own end, as many offensive minded D will have and i've said in the past I feel there may at one point up until the last few months that he needed to mature a bit and become the star that his skill level mixed with physical tools of size, reach, skating, shot, etc.., that's a lot to work with for the development team. He'll need to be with someone to cover for his mistakes but the improvement is impressive when you consider how much KEY development time he's missed.
I have no clue what Hutson will be in the NHL other then he will be in the NHL no question as the skill is as good as a Makar, Hughes, Fox but he's smaller, and still working on his skating, strength part so until you see him in the NHL it's going to be impossible to guess as to how it will go. Farrell dominated the NCAA at 21 and was easily one of the best players in the league, possible 2nd best but the NHL is a huge jump and his lack of speed, skating, strength and size were an issue and will continue to be until he gets better there or not. I would expect Hutson to have similar issuess as Farrell but he's younger, more skilled, quicker and a better skater imo. So I would expect Hutson would do better but I wouldn't want to see them rush him.
In the 20+ years that I have been closely following prospects I have never seen anyone like Lane Hutson before, his style is just different and trying to speculate on how that will translate is very difficult when you have nothing to go off to compare. All I know is I will not bet against him, he's shown me that he has an incredible skill level that rivals ANY Hab prospect I have ever seen. But it's going to be tough for him I would expect until he can work on some things.
Mailloux is a prospect you dream on because if he ever puts it all together you could have a top 10 D in the league (saying 5 years down the road) but he's shown the missed time or the IQ just isn't great or a bit of both but either way he's shown he makes a number of just poor decisions in his own end but has certainly shown a lot of progress there all things considered.
The question is can his offense overcome the defensive issues as it's very clear he's going to be an NHLer as he has it all but the defensive part and that has at least improved so until it stops improving you can't say how good he will really be other then it's looking safe to say he will be an NHLer as his production is Subban rookie year level once you look past the really rough first 2 weeks or so of the season.
With Hutson, Mailloux, Reinbacher, Engstrom, the Habs are about to add 4 NHLers to their blueline in the coming seasons and that is going to be huge, just a question of how big and to me it's varies wildly from shit to stars and everything in between as there are a number of very interesting things but also lots of question marks other then all 4 will see NHL games in the next 2 years. This is their strength, so what these 4 end up are going to sway things one direction or the other as it has the chance to put the Habs back on the map if they develop these kids right and we get lucky.
