The Montreal Canadiens took care of locking up a major piece of their young future core today with the announcement of the Lane Hutson extension.
Hutson's time with the Habs will be extended until at least 2034 on an 8-year deal, coming in at an average annual value of $8.85 million per season. This deal comes in surprisingly lower than some of the previous rich contracts handed out to NHL defenseman lately, such as Jackson LaCombe and Luke Hughes at $9 million respectively.
With Lane Hutson's long-term future in Montreal set in stone, this signifies that the Canadiens are making a push by keeping their building blocks in place as they rise back into playoff contention.
What does this move mean for Montreal?
With the Hutson extension added to the fold, that gives the Canadiens 6 key players with contracts that do not expire until 2030. Those players, in addition to Lane Hutson, are Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky, Noah Dobson and Kaiden Ghule.
This is a good sign for the long-term stability of the Canadiens' future as they look to continue building a core that can compete for championships for the foreseeable window moving forward. All 6 of these players are expected to function as key cogs in the Habs Lord Stanley wheel of fortune.
The Canadiens have been marked by many pundits as one of the squads with the brightest future in the league, and this is just one example of that.
Time will tell if/when this constructed core can return the Stanley Cup to Montreal for the first time since 1993.