Why Cole Hutson might be the Caps’ most interesting prospect

Prospect film review and skill grades

Two things we want to provide more of here at Caps Charts are film review and prospect coverage. Combining those two, we’ll be doing a series of prospect watches where we watch film for a certain Caps prospect and provide scouting and analysis. The first of these is on 2024 second rounder Cole Hutson.

Cole Hutson is one of the most promising Caps prospects and also one of my favorites. The Caps picked the American defensemen 43rd overall in the 2024 NHL Draft using a second round pick they acquired from the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for forward Beck Malenstyn. Hutson is a small, dynamic defenseman, standing at around 5’10” and weighing in around the 160 pound mark. In his draft year, he posted an impressive 51 points in 51 games playing for the U.S. National Team Development Program’s under-18 team, including 12 points in 19 USHL games. After two years at the program, Hutson left as the leading scorer among defensemen in NTDP history, ahead of names like Adam Fox, Quinn Hughes, and Cam York. He is committed to Boston University for the 2024-25 season, where he will replace his brother, Lane, a 2022 second round pick of the Montreal Canadiens who signed at the end of last season. Lane, another undersized defenseman, dominated in his two years at BU and is often one of the biggest risers in redrafts of the 2022 draft. So did NHL teams make the same mistake with Cole?

Like his older brother, Hutson’s stats are impressive, but his small size caused him to slide into the second round. Hutson is known for his skating and offensive instincts, but many have concerns about the defensive side of his game and, of course, whether his play will translate to the NHL given the size concerns. 

I watched all of Hutson’s shifts from a December USHL game against the Chicago Steel (a game that happened to be available on YouTube) to evaluate him as a prospect and assess what the Caps saw in him. I’ve broken this article down by five key aspects of any prospect’s game, each of which I’ve graded on a letter grade scale. Those aspects are: skating, puck skills (including shooting and passing), offensive awareness, defensive awareness, and compete level/physical readiness. Naturally, these skills blend into one another, so analysis in one category should often be read as also informing grades in all the categories, to some extent. 

 I’ve embedded the video of Hutson’s shifts here, but bear with me as I figure out the best way to point out clips and examples of what I’m talking about. For now, I’ve just referenced the timestamp in the clip, so unfortunately it might take some scrolling back and forth and clicking through the video if you want to see the examples. In any case, here is my film review of one of the Caps’ most dynamic and exciting prospects. 

Skating

As advertised, Hutson is a fantastic skater. He doesn’t possess blazing speed or even particularly notable acceleration (though both are above average for his peer group). But his mobility is elite. He stops and starts effectively and is agile on his edges to change direction quickly. 

Hutson’s skating is really on display in the offensive zone. He’s able to move around the offensive zone so fluidly; it’s an overlooked but very real talent to have the skating ability to keep up with vision as good as Hutson’s. Around 3:10 in the YouTube video above, you can see Hutson (number 23) using his shiftiness to find space around the zone. While he never does get the puck, it’s clear how fluid he is and how he’s dangerous the whole time the puck is in the offensive zone. 

He also walks the blue line really well, with shifty and deceptive movements that, again, keep up with the creativity his brain is processing and his stick is trying to achieve. At 5:03 in the video (and screenshotted below), I love how he receives the pass and gets off the wall really quickly. He’s intuitive with his motions; in this case, he doesn’t waste time transitioning to backwards, which would give him a few more options, but instead recognizes he has to get off the wall with speed by staying forwards. In the end, his shot doesn’t get through, but it does beat his winger, which is what the skating helped accomplish. He makes plays like this look much easier than they actually are. These skills are also a lot of why he is so good running a power play. 

The shift at 9:00 is another great example of what I’m talking about. Here, he catches on his forehand but feels the pressure and is able to spin away toward the center of the ice. That’s a deceptive and intuitive move that very few defensemen can pull off with any regularity. Hutson is among those very few. But after his move, Hutson has a step on his winger, but he doesn’t quite have the power to convert on it. Because of that, his winger basically catches up and strips the puck. This play is a perfect encapsulation of how I feel about his skating. His relative lack of power, I think, is what keeps him out of that Cale Makar ultra-elite skating talent level. He might develop some of that by gaining strength, but he’ll probably never be a particularly powerful skater at the NHL level.  

Defensively, Hutson’s skating is a strength. Like many risk-taking defensemen, he relies on strong recovery speed and the ability to change directions to bail him out of some tricky situations. At about 6:38 in the video, he doesn’t recognize a change in possession or the rush coming at him quite quickly enough to be ready for it, but he stops and transitions fast enough to recover and slow it down. While you’d like to see a defenseman avoid these situations altogether, the reality for a player like Hutson is that to be at their best, they will have to take risks. Being a strong enough skater to recover from those risks is an absolute must at the NHL level. 

Thanks for reading Caps Charts! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and become a smarter Caps fan.

One more note on Hutson’s defensive skating is his ability to transition from backwards to forwards. I really like his decision-making here, and his feet enable him to absorb the rush skating forward. For a smaller defenseman, this is especially important, because it can often put you in a stronger posture to be skating forwards as opposed to backwards. 10:05 is a good example, where Hutson is able to transition to forwards while still matching the forward’s speed and physically ride him out into the corner and turn the puck over. This happens again at 15:38; again, his feet are very good and he uses that effectively to play defense. 

Skating grade: B+

Puck Skills

Hutson didn’t have the puck a ton in the game I watched (which makes it an outlier), but when he did, his high-end puck skills were on display. He’s deceptive and clever with the puck on his stick, which lets him get out of tight situations and make plays up and down the ice. At 14:20 in the video, he fakes toward the middle with a forechecker bearing down before quickly pulling the puck back and turning it into a rush. He then stickhandles in the middle of three opponents before finding a clever dump-in that lets him chase and results in a retrieval for his forwards. 

His stick skills are on display on the point, too. At 5:39, he receives a pass to the point on his backhand and is able to quickly pull the puck to his forehand and get a shot through. These are tricky plays that Hutson can make routinely to create offense where other players couldn’t.

Hutson’s puck skills were even more obvious when the ice opened up. In a 4v4 situation in the third period, at 15:20 of the video, he collected the puck on a scissor play at the blue line before dancing through two Steel defenders to find a shooting lane. That shot, like many he took in this game, got blocked. In my viewing, Hutson did seem to struggle with getting the puck through traffic on net. But it’s something other scouting reports don’t mention or in some cases even list as a strength, so I think it’s more likely that this game was just a one-off in that department.

His passing is quite good as well, although it seems to have not quite caught up to his vision. There were a few occasions where he saw something but couldn’t quite make the pass work. This isn’t uncommon for high end playmakers, though, and it’s honestly probably a good sign overall, showing how good his processing and vision are. 

I think a particular weakness (at least relative to the rest of his game) was passing from the defensive zone, or what is often referred to as the “first pass.” A few times, Hutson bailed on pucks that he probably didn’t have to with chips and lazy backhand passes. One example comes at 7:30 in the video. I’d like to see him find better breakout plays more consistently, especially for such an otherwise confident and skilled player. A modern NHL blueliner—especially one who, like Hutson, isn’t offering a shutdown defensive presence—needs to be efficient and effective in driving the play down the ice. He does have it in him—one composed pass he made from in front of his own net with two forecheckers bearing down that started a rush the other way comes to mind (14:55)—but he pulls that off less often than he should. This will be a key area of improvement for Hutson as he continues to develop over the next few years as he paces toward NHL ready.

Puck Skills grade: A-

Offensive Awareness

Hutson’s offensive awareness of the ice is elite. I’ll keep this section short since I’ve already touched on it in the examples above, but Hutson understands space in a way that is really hard to do from ice level. The easiest place to see this is on the power play, when he is either finding lanes with his own passes or making intelligent subtle movements to present himself as an option for his teammates. I love his movement in the power play at 17:06, where you can see him adjust a few feet at a time to make the cross-ice seam pass possible. These subtle movements don’t look like much, but they’re crucial to the power play’s ability to move the puck and also indicate high end background processing of the game. Later on the same power play, his awareness of that seam is again obvious as he makes a cross-ice pass (17:38) that sets up a one-time goal. His deception to look off the shot freezes a couple Steel defenders, which opens up the seam pass for a second. Hutson recognizes this and makes the pass quickly and accurately. That’s what he brings to the table. 

Offensive Awareness grade: A

Defensive Awareness 

Hutson’s defensive awareness is fine, but it’s not a particular strength. He makes some questionable decisions and I think he struggles with timing his aggressiveness at times. The tendency with players like this is to be overaggressive, and Hutson falls into that trap occasionally (see 3:40 for a particularly poor step-up), but ironically I actually think he isn’t aggressive enough a lot of the time. He’s often not as tight to his man as I’d like him to be when the neutral zone gets stretched out, preferring to bide his time on his own blue line rather than close space to the winger. This often lets his winger catch a stretch pass and turn before Hutson is defending him, which would be prevented if he was a little tighter. At 13:00, he gives his winger so much space that he is fully half a zone away from the rushing player by the time that player reaches the red line. Just compare his gap to his d-partner’s, which is much tighter—and better. Hutson ends up defending the rush ok, but really only because the rushing player is a defenseman and doesn’t know how to punish him. He won’t get away with that as much in college and certainly not in the NHL.

Hutson’s gaps are also not the best, which is disappointing for a skater as good as he is. At 9:20, for example, he gives up the opportunity to snuff out the rush quickly by giving his winger plenty of space to collect the puck and make a play up ice. The best rush defenders in the NHL—especially the ones who can skate like Hutson can—are aggressive and stay tight to their wingers to prevent rushes from ever getting started. Hutson should be using his skating to his advantage to keep tight gaps and pressure rushing forwards, a skill I do not think he has yet mastered. I also don’t think his defensive stick is that great on the rush. He’s prone to sweep checks, like at 10:04 and 5:24, and other low percentage plays with his stick, which didn’t hurt him too much in this game but is a bad habit that will leave him vulnerable against NCAA and NHL forwards.

One thing I do like is the way he transitions with the rush as the weak side defenseman, finding the second guy to track. But he can lose his guy as the rush transitions into d-zone play. In the zone, he is liable to get caught puck watching and lose his man (it seems like the NTDP is playing man-to-man, like the Caps do). 6:45 is one good example where he finds a guy to track but then jumps in behind the net and leaves his man alone. Again, it doesn’t hurt him here, but it’s not a good habit.

Perhaps I’m being unfair to Hutson in criticizing his defensive play. After all, in this game, the U.S. team gave up five goals and he was not on the ice for any of them. Indeed, I think it is often the case that players like this, while deficient defensively, are not always a net negative because they are so valuable to the possession game. Hutson rarely loses the puck, and he is often creating up-ice, both of which mean that he won’t be forced to play defense as much as another player who doesn’t move the puck so well. It’s also worth noting that the NTDP isn’t exactly renowned for teaching defensive principles. Their teams often end up with high-octane offenses and leaky defenses. Still, Hutson is a defenseman, and he will be forced to defend at the college and NHL levels. He has some work to do to improve in that department, and a couple years (or more) at BU will help a lot. 

Defensive awareness grade: C+

Compete Level and Physical Readiness

This section is the easiest to write and the least interesting. Hutson is small. There is no way around the fact that 5’10” 160 lbs is small for a defenseman at the highest levels of hockey. He will bulk up a bit in college, but he’ll never be a physical force in the NHL. That’s ok—his game isn’t built around physical play—but it’s something that will limit his ceiling as an NHL defenseman. 

About five seconds into the game I watched, Hutson had already been knocked off the puck by a forechecker and lost the battle, leading to an offensive possession for the Steel. Luckily, this didn’t seem to happen too often. To be a player that small and have made it as far as he had, you have to be pretty savvy about the way you use your body. He can use his body defensively in the right settings, like at 16:20, but he definitely doesn’t rely on that. In the words of prospect expert Chris Peters, Hutson “does what he can with the frame that he has,” which I think captures his effectiveness within an inherently limited ceiling.

In terms of Hutson’s compete level, I think it’s a mixed bag. It’s always hard to judge this on one game, but there were both positive and negative signs. He can look a bit lackadaisical at times, but this is again sometimes a feature rather than a bug for a player as calm and confident as Hutson is. He made a few lazy plays with the puck, which I didn’t love. But he also slid to try to block a shot with a minute left in a game his team was winning 8-5 (18:28), so I certainly don’t think it’s fair to question his effort or character. He’s not a super intense, high compete player, but that’s more a function of his style than of any character concerns. In short, the bad grade in this section is because of his frame, not his compete.

 Compete Level and Physical Readiness grade: D

Projection and NHL Comparables

The natural comp for a small, offensively skilled defenseman from the NTDP is Quinn Hughes, but I think it’s unfair to expect Hutson to get to that level. He is not (and probably will never be) the defender that Hughes is, which is ok. I also think Hughes is a slightly better skater and passer. 

As better comparables, two other defensemen come to mind for me: Adam Boqvist and Erik Brännstrӧm. Both are small and skilled, like Hutson. Boqvist is a decent third pair offensive specialist who has bounced around a bit but landed with the Florida Panthers for next season (which makes me think he’ll turn into another hidden gem like Gustav Forsling or Carter Verhaeghe). Brännstrӧm is a decent third pair offensive specialist who has bounced around a bit but landed with the Colorado Avalanche for next season (which makes me think he’ll turn into another hidden gem like Devon Toews or Sam Girard). Hutson doesn’t have quite as good of a shot as Boqvist and he isn’t quite the skater that Brännstrӧm is, but I think these are his closest comparables (and in my opinion he has better puck skills than either of them).

I think “decent third pair offensive specialist” is about what the Caps can expect from Hutson, which is good value for a mid-second round pick. I do think he has the ceiling to do a bit more, including potentially run a top power play at the NHL level and even be a top 4 guy in his prime, but I’d put that more toward the tail of his distribution of outcomes. I expect he’ll spend 2-3 seasons with BU and then maybe another mostly with Hershey before he’s ready for the NHL, but I’m very excited for his eventual arrival. Prospects like this are fascinating; he’s not a  If nothing else, this sure is a fun player to watch. Let us know in the comments what you expect from Hutson in his NHL career.

If you like this post, let me know which Caps prospect you’d like to see me watch and review next!