A couple of months removed from the Montreal Canadiens being eliminated in the first round by the Washington Capitals, with the Stanley Cup awarded, and the NHL’s awards handed out, we enter the dog days of summer for NHL coverage. This is the time for reflection and examination, which fits perfectly for the final part of our series on Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki.
We’ve examined Suzuki by the numbers (Big Nick Energy Part 1), breaking down his ascension as a star player, and we’ve looked at his competitive drive, leadership, and what makes him special (Big Nick Energy Part 2). Now, let’s look at how Suzuki’s reputation has changed, and what to expect going forward.
Proven Quantity & Quality
Hockey is a sport that has within it a lot of randomness. Complicated variables like ice, skates, the boards and glass, and even the shape of the puck, lead to a lot more reading and reacting than other team sports. This means that skill is less correlated with winning than in other team sports. That doesn’t mean winning means less, but it does mean that establishing a known level of talent in a sport with so many variables can take more time.
Suzuki has been a good player for a very long time, but heading into the 2024-25 NHL season, there were questions about whether he could repeat his exemplary 2023-24 performance. The start of the season with the whole team stumbling out the gate created enough doubt that Suzuki was left off of Team Canada’s roster for the 4 Nations Face-Off, however I believe that’s the last time Suzuki’s bona fides will be doubted.
The excellent regular season was likely enough to cast doubts aside, but more important than that was Suzuki’s performance in the playoffs. Had you not watched the series between the Canadiens and Capitals, you might see two goals and zero assists in five games and think it’s nothing special, but let’s look a little more closely.
A True First Line
Heading into the playoffs, the Canadiens’ top line with Suzuki centring Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky had played 705:58 together according to Natural Stat Trick. A total of 51 forward lines in the NHL last season played 250 minutes or more together, and of those 51, only four scored goals at a higher rate than Suzuki’s line. An impressive mark considering the Canadiens finished 17th both in goals and expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five, but not the whole picture.
Against the league at large, that top line held strong, managing positive differentials not just in goals but in shot attempts and shots as well, and staying just a hair below even in expected goals. Relative to the rest of the team, the top line was wildly successful by all measures. But in the playoffs where hard-matching can undo even the best lines in the NHL, as an eighth seed with no second line, against top-seeded Washington with two of the most dominant scoring lines in the league last season, is was a recipe for disaster, right?
With a relatively inexperienced defensive group to back them up, the Suzuki line skated into the playoffs with question marks. Suzuki had been targeted in the last couple games of the season, with the Chicago Blackhawks in particular catching him with a dangerous hit that shook him up. Clearly, he wasn’t at 100% in the playoffs — few are — but he, Caufield, and Slafkovsky gave the Capitals fits for five games.
Whether you look at things from the perspective of what Suzuki and company were able to accomplish relative to the rest of the Canadiens’ roster, or just the raw differentials of how significantly the Capitals were outplayed with that line on the ice, the takeaway is very clear: they were excellent.
In 59:56 together through five games, the Suzuki line didn’t struggle to reproduce the strong play they showed in the regular season. In fact, under more pressure, they were even better.
As impressive as the overall numbers were, the minute details are possibly even crazier. While the Capitals certainly had a strategy they wanted to go with against the Suzuki line — trying as much as they could to keep John Carlson and Jakub Chychrun out against them, with the Pierre-Luc Dubois line out as much as possible — nothing worked.
Suzuki played five minutes or more at five-on-five against 18 different Capitals, with Chychrun drawing the hard matchup with 45:37 head-to-head. Here’s how that looked by the underlying numbers.
The Capitals tried quite hard to get the five-man unit of Chychrun, Carlson, Dubois, Connor McMichael, and Tom Wilson out against the Suzuki line, and despite the narrative of how Wilson impacted the results of the series, that top Capitals unit didn’t just struggle, it was eaten alive.
In fact, essentially every matchup the Capitals tried against the Suzuki line had the same result: a lot of time spent defending, and not very successful defending at that.
The Capitals aren’t exactly a Cup contender that the Montreal Canadiens are comparing themselves to, but they’re absolutely in a position where they should be much, much better than the Canadiens are.
The fact that a team with three of the most dominant goal-share lines in the NHL this season couldn’t find a single matchup to contain the line of Slafkovsky, Suzuki, and Caufield in the playoffs, while Suzuki was clearly injured, should have Canadiens fans salivating about the possibilities going forward. You could argue that Suzuki and Caufield have both hit their prime years, but Slafkovsky still has a lot of development to go, and the Canadiens’ defence core will be a year more experienced, with an added Noah Dobson in the mix.
Mr. Everything
While there has been a question at certain times in his career whether or not Nick Suzuki could ‘do it all’ so to speak, the way his coaches have deployed him in the NHL has always been to assume he’ll find a way.
Whether it was Claude Julien, Dominique Ducharme, or Martin St-Louis, Suzuki has long been the Swiss Army knife trusted to be thrown into any situation and excel. That hasn’t always worked out, but due to his own development as a player at the NHL level, and the increasing talent level of his supporting cast, the Canadiens have a centre leading a top line that they are not afraid to put into any matchup.
That line also costs just $23.325M against the cap for the next five seasons, less than Auston Matthews and William Nylander cost Toronto ($24.75M).
Don’t be surprised when Suzuki is seen around the league as one of the most versatile and underrated players in the sport over those next five seasons. To the point he’ll end up being seen as overrated with that discussion. But we can properly rate him here at home.
Andrew Berkshire is the former managing editor of Eyes on the Prize, and the founder of Game Over Network Inc. A Canadian, employee-owned sports media startup focused on platforming young creators across the country. Find Andrew live on YouTube after Habs games with Game Over Montreal, where you can also find Marc Dumont, Kay Imam, and Conor Tomalty to bring you interactive postgame analysis. You can join the Game Over Network’s Discord, and support us on Patreon as we employ over 30 young sports journalists and analysts across Canada’s seven NHL markets.
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