a key thing about college free agents in hutton's position are whether or not they sign an elc for this year or next. if hutton signed an elc this year it means he is unavailable to go to the comets for the playoffs and we lose a year on his ELC - meaning he's a UFA and an RFA a year earlier. if he signs an ELC for next year and a PTO for this year, he is ineligible for the NHL season but can join the comets on their playoff run
this is a pretty important detail and one that botch nailed before the contract was even announced. in a situation where most speculation was that hutton would be given the former (an elc this year), that the canucks negotiated him to the latter is significant and very important.
I will agree that was an important detail, and while he did get it correct, it may have been a guess, and the only reason I would question it is he did get the details wrong. If he admited to getting those details wrong, I would probably give him more credit on this. But now I just really don't see it as a clear he hot good information.
because it was confirmed later
if you were botchford, or any member of the media, this seems reasonable. if you're any given person, no. thats the debate at heart here. i think botch is reliable enough to be given the benefit of the doubt. i did that and i feel that my assertion was supported.
But it wasn't confirmed. All that was confirmed was that he signed. The earlier info is not really provable one way or the other.
It reminds me of the scam where I guy sends out an email to 50 people saying team X will beat team Y. He also sends out another email to 50 other people saying team y will beat team x. Either way he has 50 people saying wow.