After having gone through the ascension of Nick Suzuki by the analytical models that are now intrinsic to hockey analysis, it would be easy enough to stop there and rest our case that Nick Suzuki is one of the top players in the NHL right now. But you know there’s more to it than that. I touched on Suzuki’s competitive fire in the previous piece, but I want to delve deeper into what I see from the young captain.
The on-ice actions to evidence Suzuki’s leadership aren’t lacking, despite playing on a team that has not won many games the previous few years. The precision of his game and his maturity off the ice has always put Suzuki on track to a leadership position for the Montreal Canadiens, but there’s one moment for me that put the exclamation point on how he leads, and why he’s the perfect captain for this market.
It is March 5, 2022. The Habs are feeling themselves a little in a lost season, on a bit of a run as they visit the powerhouse Edmonton Oilers. With the game tied at two in the second period, the Canadiens get a power play with Warren Foegle caught hooking Josh Anderson. With under 20 seconds remaining in the power play, Chris Wideman (yes, remember when Wideman was the power-play quarterback? That was only three years ago) sends a pass along the blue line to Suzuki, who had left the offensive zone to shake coverage and create space for himself to attack with speed, a move he loves. He streaks in, uses stick-checks from Duncan Keith and Derek Ryan to conceal his puck movement and release from goaltender Mike Smith just enough, then fires between the gap in the stick-checks far-side right over the pads and under the blocker. It’s a beautiful goal, only one problem…
It was offside earlier in the power play. That rule destroys a lot of great goals for marginal measurements.
It would be understandable to get frustrated in that moment. The Canadiens were playing pretty well against a much better team that had beaten them 7-2 earlier in the season. Many times, teams get flustered in these moments; they let emotions control their actions.
Suzuki is built different though. Instead, he gets back to business. With even less time remaining on the power play, Suzuki reads the play as the puck goes up to Wideman at the left point, scoots just outside the blue line, and curls in with less speed. But he notices no one really challenges, so he skates even deeper, uses Darnell Nurse as a screen, and roofs one over Smith, short-side this time.
To score again right away on essentially the same move after having a goal called off tells you a lot about Suzuki. He doesn’t get rattled, and he has a lot of confidence in what he’s capable of. That goal sent a message; that he’ll show you his moves, you may even know when they’re going to happen, but he’ll beat you anyway.
I know many in the Canadiens fanbase would love to have a Brady Tkachuk as a captain, all fire and brimstone, raw emotion, and physicality. Sometimes that approach can carry you through, but more often than not it gets you feel-good losses. The Canadiens’ fanbase also runs hot. We’re emotional about our Habs, and a captain who can get carried away by that same emotion can be a bad mix. Suzuki’s focus under pressure should evoke some memories of Joe Sakic if you were lucky enough to watch him.
It’s outside of the actual games where Suzuki’s competitive fire burns brightest, though, at least in my opinion.
Elite hockey brain
As a fan of the sport of hockey, watching Suzuki fascinates me on a nightly basis. He’s not the fastest skater, he’s not the quickest decision-maker, nor best shooter, though he is strong in all those areas. What separates him from the pack is a combination of his understanding of the game, awareness, and his ability to build on his skill set in a myriad of ways. Not to mention a sizable chip on his shoulder.
To give one example of an area of the game where Suzuki excels by doing things his own way, everyone should take the time to watch how he forechecks when he is the F1 chasing down a loose puck or a puck carrier. More often than not, Suzuki will take a non-traditional angle to the puck, even allowing his opponent to arrive at the puck before him. Timing his arrival at the play perfectly, Suzuki will engage with his opponent physically just as they acquire or reach for the puck.
Many players use these forechecking opportunities to inflict physical punishment, but Suzuki will elect to give a bump more than a check, shifting his opponents balance and positioning, only to deftly steal the puck. Sometimes he will even turn his back to the play, using his hips to make contact, confident that his disruption will allow the puck to go through his opponent, giving him an immediate outlet to accelerate away from them and pull the puck off the boards and into danger.
If he’s too late to engage the puck-carrier, Suzuki patrols passing lanes like a shark smelling blood in the water, picking off passes, stealing pucks, and creating chances. He is constantly using speed adjustments to time his involvement in plays at perfect times, something Tyler Toffoli mastered to compensate for a relatively slow skating stride.
At the highest level of sports, if you’re not improving you’re falling behind, but some clearly take things to another level. For example, the joke about Mark Donk and Buzz Flibbit regarding the Pittsburgh Penguins’ perceived lack of quality wingers exists because that franchise was able to pull players who would drastically improve over time, seemingly out of nowhere, all the time. I believe a big reason for that is that being around Sidney Crosby and being exposed to his preparation daily is going to raise the bar by default for most.
What I see from Suzuki is a very similar approach, and it has spread beyond himself. That’s leadership.
#NiCole
For example, look at the improvements we’ve seen from Cole Caufield. It’s no secret Suzuki and Caufield are close friends, and when Caufield was struggling to finish the same way after returning from shoulder surgery last season it didn’t take long for him to realize he had to pick it up in other areas. Caufield very clearly and visibly worked on being more involved defensively, and especially pushing hard on the backcheck after turnovers.
I’ve seen some suggest that the focus on defence came first, and that’s what dropped the goal-scoring, but that doesn’t line up with the facts at all. If Caufield went into the season determined to sacrifice offence for defence, he would have fewer opportunities to score as a result based on choices made throughout the game. Let’s look at Natural Stat Trick‘s data.
Caufield put up an identical shot rate per hour, 21.25 shot attempts in all situations, a larger percent of those shots being on net, with a higher expected goals output per hour, 1.23 versus 1.18 the previous season, with a slight improvement on high-danger chances per game (from 1.00 to 1.06).
With nearly identical inputs, Caufield saw his shooting percentage drop from 16.46% to 8.92%.
Meanwhile, he worked on his playmaking and defensive involvement, and while he’s no defensive stalwart, he’s gone from a big drag defensively to defensive contributor, and has now recorded a second straight 30-assist season, while his scoring touch has returned.
I’m not saying that Caufield wouldn’t have found a new level without Suzuki around, but it helps to have a leader on the team who leads by example in that area. A coach can tell a team all they want that buying into a philosophy will pay off, but a respected peer leading the way for that coach’s vision is how you build team culture.
Caufield may have arrived at this same point regardless, but would Josh Anderson? Would Christian Dvorak? The list of improved players on the Canadiens is long.
Building hockey sense
What does it mean to have great hockey sense, or to say someone reads the play well? It’s not like someone is just smart at hockey and knows what to do and where to go. That’s magical thinking, and not how sports work. Suzuki reads the play well because he has programmed himself to do so by repetition. While some are better at it than others, all sports require a lot of repetition to master skills, just like any endeavour.
Remember that on top of being a player’s coach, Martin St-Louis is also a gigantic hockey nerd, and he has a central thesis to his approach: hockey sense can be learned. That doesn’t mean everyone can become Connor McDavid, but everyone can improve.
Suzuki takes a similar approach to his game, adding skills and nuance to how he approaches plays all over the ice, building new habits, new reactions to familiar patterns. It’s something that takes time, which is why I have a hypothesis to explain Suzuki’s so-called slow starts. I think he uses the first month or so of the season to test out some subtle changes to different areas of his game, and it takes time for it to pay off, which it does down the stretch every season.
How much of a factor that would be is highly debatable — like I said, it’s a hypothesis more than anything. The point, however, is that Suzuki is a relentless competitor, and that doesn’t change when the spotlight at the Bell Centre isn’t on him. In my estimation, he is about as perfect a player to lead the way for St-Louis’s vision as one could hope for.
That perfect storm will lead to a change in how Suzuki is perceived outside Montreal eventually, it’ll just take some time. We’ll delve into why in part three of this series, looking at his reputation, but here’s a little preview by request from the comments on the last piece. Nick Suzuki in 2024-25 in era-adjusted points among Canadiens centres all time.
Suzuki is already within a top-10 season all-time for Habs centres. Not a first-line centre though, right?
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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