Quoting: drambui
placeholder? the guy is top 10 in point for dmen!
and that's excellent! I'll repeat... In the grand scheme of things (ie looking into the future) 30 year old Matheson was never considered to be the Habs PP1 guy. Not when Hughes acquired him (at age 28), and not now. Hence being a placeholder.
and let's called a spade a spade here (whatever that metaphor is), Matheson is 10th in scoring for Dmen because he plays over 70% of all the Habs PP time (which is 7th worst in the NHL), and is 3rd in the
entire NHL for average time on ice... Put Matheson on any current contending team, and he obviously would not be putting up the same production or ice-time. All this should reinforce my point that if MTL want to be a contending team, Matheson shouldn't be their PP1 quarterback, nor should he be their leader in ice-time.
And this isn't to take anything away from Matheson! He's been great for MTL. Both offensively and defensively. But ideally (if MTL can be a contending team) you want him running the Habs PP2, and at most on MTLs 2nd defensive pairing (3rd or 4th most used dman for ice time).
And to tie everything together, this isn't to say to rush Hutson. I'm all for MTL taking their time with him. But inserting him directly on PP1 would
not be rushing him in the slightest, simply giving him the best opportunity to succeed. Hutson will be getting sheltered minutes at 5v5 for quite a while until he can get used to the pro game / speed. And as others have mentioned, pairing him with Savard is the absolute best choice.