Will Hutton ever play for Canucks again?
With struggling defenceman sidelined; coach suggests stamina may be an issue
— It’s the start of December and only one Canuck is averaging more ice time than Ben Hutton.
The season is two months old, Hutton is playing just fine. He’s averaging 21:59 a game, just one second less than team leader Michael Del Zotto.
Hutton is getting regular special teams shifts. He’s not running the table when it comes to points, but the Canucks are scoring 2.59 evenstrength goals every 60 minutes he plays.
At the time, the only defender with a higher scoring rate is Derrick Pouliot. This is very good. And so is almost all of the underlying data on Hutton.
On Dec. 1, everything about him was encouraging.
But when it comes to Hutton, December feels like five years ago.
In the 46 games since, Hutton was a healthy scratch in 12 of them. Then the floor of his season finally collapsed over the weekend because of a troubling infection in his foot, keeping him off of the Canucks’ current road trip.
Now it’s fair to wonder when and if he’ll play for the Canucks again.
This would normally be the point in a story from Vegas where a writer makes some cheeky jokes about Hutton’s luck.
But luck, it seems, has nothing to do with what has happened.
Luck isn’t why he went from averaging 21:59 per game to the 15:38 he’s been at since Dec. 1.
Luck isn’t why his even-strength goals-scored ratio went from being one of the best on the team (56 per cent) to one of the worst (33 per cent).
Luck isn’t keeping Hutton out of the lineup and luck isn’t going to get his career track trending up again.
That will entirely be on him. Well, on him and his relationship with his head coach.
“I thought his game dipped, which I think he’d agree to,” head coach Travis Green said.
On that point, there’s little to debate. By any measure, Hutton’s performance dipped. But it dipped in such an aggressive way, there is one overriding question: How did this happen?
Recently, Green has pointed to Hutton’s conditioning, which probably shouldn’t be an issue for an NHL player who turns 25 next month.
“I’d like to see him get stronger,” Green said. “I’d like to see his conditioning be higher. I think that will help his game. I think his game has dipped a little over the year and I think that may be part of it.
“He’s gone through adversity this year and that happens. He’s a young defenceman who hasn’t gone through a lot of adversity in his career and he has now.”
Green said Hutton’s conditioning has “gone down a little bit over the year.”
This is not a good sign, especially on a team where the young players were called out publicly by veterans for acting entitled a couple of years ago.
Since then, Canucks management has been adamant on making players earn their playing time. It may not have helped that Hutton was given a two-year extension that pays him $2.8 million this year and next based on what he may become and not what he had accomplished.
It was pointed out to Green that the conditioning issue will lead people to conclude Hutton is not putting in the time off the ice.
“He’s a young guy learning his way,” Green said. “That’s part of it.
“We talk to lots of our guys about becoming good pros and making sure they’re ready to play every day. That’s part of being in the league and learning how hard the league is in terms of travel.
“It’s not an exact science on what you have to do to get your body stronger. But I do think Hutton has to get stronger. It will help his skating, his duration during shifts, whether it’s get up the ice after you’ve spent 15-20 seconds (in your end).
“I could go on and on about lots of players.
“He needs to play better. We’re going to push him to be a better hockey player.
“Hopefully, he becomes that.”