MONTREAL— It’s eight minutes into a tight-checking game against a desperate Carolina Hurricanes team when Nick Suzuki puts together a defining sequence for the Montreal Canadiens.
He sees David Savard get control of the puck just outside Montreal’s blue line. He flashes to centre ice to give Savard the best pass option. He gets the puck and reloads his team’s attack.
Suzuki then identifies he’s skating into a trap of four Hurricanes players with only two teammates standing somewhat stationary alongside him, so he flips the puck into space before speeding past everyone to retrieve it. Then he finishes the sequence by emerging from the left corner, firing a quick pass to Jayden Struble at the point and watching as Struble’s shot gets tipped by Juraj Slafkovsky for a 1-0 lead.
It's really simple stuff from a player who has the ability to make it complicated. He’s Montreal’s best offensive gun, a deceptive skater and gifted stickhandler who can turn disadvantageous circumstances into advantageous ones with one unexpected turn or one dirty dangle.
But Suzuki’s process to turn lemons into lemonade on this sequence involves none of that and ultimately set the tone for a 4-0 win against a great Carolina team that came into the night intent on reviving its greatness by snapping a skid that saw it lose four of its last five games.
“Everybody’s actions were really in the direction of taking care of the team in terms of how much risk we’re going to take,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis afterwards.
It started with his captain and filtered on down through the lineup, and the timing of it was noteworthy.
With 10 days to go to the NHL trade deadline, no player in Montreal wants to keep the band together more than Suzuki. He entered the season talking about how he was sick of seeing players sold off the roster come February and sick of playing out the string for the final months of three consecutive years away from the playoffs. He said he was desperate for all 82 games to be meaningful.
Suzuki used the 58th game of the season to help ensure they still might be.
Yes, the Canadiens entered the night five points out of the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference and closed it in the same position. But they earned their second win in as many tries post-4 Nations break by playing the way they need to play to remain in the race, and their captain was at the heart of it.
Suzuki had two assists in a 5-2 win over the Ottawa Senators last Saturday and he set up Montreal’s first goal against Carolina before scoring one of his own and adding another assist to increase his totals to 16 goals and 57 points this season. He took what the game gave him and provided the rest of the Canadiens a template to follow.
Patrik Laine (who had a goal and two assists) followed. He arguably played more responsibly in this game than he had in 29 others with the Canadiens, and he ended the night talking about Suzuki’s influence on him and his teammates.
“He always plays the right way and shows us how it’s supposed to be done,” the 26-year-old said. “I think it’s important for this group with a lot of young guys to have that kind of example of how to play these kind of games. I think he’s been great.”
It’s not the time for Suzuki to just be ordinary, and he knows it.
The Canadiens lost eight of nine games going to the break and undid all the momentum gained over a 19-9-2 run that catapulted them back into the playoffs, and Suzuki was far too ordinary over the last three games of that stretch. He faltered with zero points and a minus-3 rating because he forced too many plays and took too many risks.
But Suzuki went away determined to flip the script, and now he has.
It matters that he’s delivering this way now—when the Canadiens need him to most.
“Coming off the break, I think he’s in a good place,” said St. Louis, “and he’s leading with a lot of good actions on the ice right now.”
It’s what you need your captain and best player to do.
It might not give Suzuki what he wants between now and the trade deadline. He said earlier on Tuesday he feels the Canadiens have an opportunity to discourage management from trading away players. “We haven’t gotten a message from (general manager) Kent (Hughes) that we’re selling or anything, so we’re pushing and trying to make it tough on him,” he added, and being the driving force in a win that directly followed those comments won’t guarantee the outcome he’s looking for.
But whether Suzuki gets it or not, he’s growing as a leader by delivering in these moments.
The hope is that growth will be defining for the Canadiens, and not just for this game but for the 24 that will follow to the end of the regular season—and beyond.
As this team becomes the team it wants to be in future years, it’ll depend on Suzuki not only leading on the stat sheet but leading the Canadiens to play the right way.
That’s what he did on Tuesday, and it’s what he needs to consistently do moving forward.
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