- Lane Hutson’s eight-year deal ranks No. 1 on The Athletic’s best value contract list
- Jack Hughes tumbled from last year’s top spot all the way down to No. 10
- Read below for the full top 10 and where the NHL’s best bargains landed
Lane Hutson is barely two seasons into his NHL career and already owns the best value contract in the league.
Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic rolled out his updated ranking of the NHL’s best bang-for-buck deals, and the Canadiens defenseman lands at No. 1. Hutson’s eight-year extension carries an $8.9 million cap hit, a steal for a reigning Calder winner who already quarterbacks Montreal’s power play.
Montreal locked him up last fall on a contract that looks better with every passing month.
Here’s the full top 10:
Ottawa’s Jake Sanderson checks in at No. 2 with an $8.1 million cap hit, and Tampa Bay winger Brandon Hagel sits third at $6.5 million. Carolina shows up twice, with young forward Jackson Blake at No. 4 and Seth Jarvis at No. 7.
Detroit blue-liner Moritz Seider grabs the No. 5 spot, Capitals goalie Logan Thompson comes in sixth, and Calgary netminder Dustin Wolf rounds out the middle at No. 8.
The biggest slide belongs to Jack Hughes. The Devils center topped this exact list a year ago. Now he’s all the way down at No. 10, with Buffalo captain Rasmus Dahlin one spot ahead of him at No. 9.
Hutson took home the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie last season, setting a Canadiens franchise record for a rookie defenseman with 66 points:
Every deal on the list still has at least four years left on it. Montreal, Carolina, and the rest of these clubs aren’t handing their bargains back anytime soon.
