Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

Last night, Lane Hutson was eliminated from the Frozen Four tournament.

Now he’s ready to sign with the Canadiens in the NHL. We’re all expecting it to happen in the next few hours or days, as is the case for a college player once his NCAA career is over.

He’s ready to sign, says Elliotte Friedman. #SurpriseAndConsternation

Joking aside, the real surprise was to see his club lose yesterday. Nobody really expected him to lose before the final, but anything can happen on a hockey rink.

Things change quickly, in fact. The proof? If he’d scored a superb goal in overtime, the Internet would have exploded.

But instead, we’re left wondering what caused his club, which was stronger than Denver’s, to lose in a game like that. We look for explanations.

And we can find one here. Lane Hutson, who is sometimes invisible on the ice when he’s not shining like the star he can be, went soft with a nasty pass behind his net.

You’d think that without that Denver goal, there’d be no overtime, right?

What you need to know, at least, is that the defenseman made a man of himself and admitted his mistake. He admits he didn’t play well on the sequence, and even though Macklin Celebrini says it’s not his fault (the play shouldn’t have gone that far), Hutson knows he’s in the wrong.

Let this be a lesson to him: no matter how talented he is, a pass like that won’t fly with Martin St-Louis. He’s got talent, but he’s got to limit the kind of mistakes that can easily be avoided.

And in the NHL, things move a lot faster than in the NCAA. He’ll no doubt realize that on Monday…

Breaking news

– Interesting.

– How bad does the Rocket have to make the playoffs? [BPM Sports]

– It will indeed be in part in Montreal, the Four Nations Tournament. Don Sweeney will be the Canadian GM.

– Still.

– Still.

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