Why Nick Suzuki’s brain should give Canadiens fans reason to be excited
Par Arpon Basu Il y a 5h 21
OTTAWA – The final push was on, the action was frantic, but there was one guy on the ice who was the polar opposite of what was going on around him.
The Guelph Storm was down 4-3 in the waning seconds of the third period of Game 2 of the OHL final, they were coming off a failed power play, but one that created a sense that something was coming.
The Ottawa 67’s, the best team in the OHL, one that hadn’t lost a playoff game at that point and was by far the best defensive team in the league this season, were scrambling. But the clock was also ticking and Ottawa’s 14th straight win in the playoffs was just seconds away as a loose puck in the corner was controlled by rookie Marco Rossi.
Nick Suzuki, at that moment, was doing what Nick Suzuki does.
He wasn’t frantic.
He was lurking.
It is a word that comes up over and over when discussing Suzuki’s game, his ability to lurk in dead areas of the ice, finding holes in the opposing team’s coverage even though every opposing team has targeted him as the one player they will not allow to beat them.
But Suzuki consistently takes that attention from his opponents, the cross-checks behind the play, the extra slash as he skates away with the puck, and just keeps playing. Keeps lurking, waiting for his chance to strike and do damage.
This was one of those times. A time to lurk and strike.
As Rossi got a hold of the puck, he rushed his clearing attempt and gave it right to the player the 67’s had spent the better part of two games harassing to avoid allowing him to get opportunities just like this; puck on his stick in a scoring area, roughly 15 seconds to play and a one-goal lead to protect.
It was, to put it mildly, the worst possible outcome of that clearing attempt.
Suzuki got the puck and chose not to shoot it immediately. He had time, but the Ottawa defenders also had time and they converged into his shooting lane, desperate to prevent the tying goal. By the time Suzuki shot it, he had no net to shoot at with two players – including Rossi diving desperately to correct his gaffe – now in the way. His shot was blocked, the game was over, and the Storm headed back home to Guelph down 2-0 in a third consecutive playoff series.
An easy analysis of what went wrong on that play would be to say Suzuki took too long to shoot, that his window to score closed quickly and he missed it. A further extrapolation of that could be to say he froze in the moment. And he would agree, but not for the reason you might think.
He was not happy with himself after the game, but not because he took too long to shoot. It was because he did not take long enough to shoot.
“They put it right on my tape and I think I had a lot more time than I thought I did,” Suzuki said after the game, not all that impressed with himself. “Everyone was diving around and I could have waited for them to get out of the way.
“I rushed it a bit.”
I rushed it a bit.
Here’s the sequence and watch as Suzuki delays before shooting, a delay that allowed two 67’s defenders to get in his shooting lane.
https://cdn.theathletic.c...uzuki-G2-P3-1945-Shot.mp4
Most 19-year-old hockey players who found themselves in that situation would have ripped a shot as soon as possible. They wouldn’t have known exactly how much time was left. They wouldn’t have considered the possibility of having a better opportunity once the chaos dissipated. They wouldn’t have had the poise to wait at that moment with that much on the line.
Maybe if Suzuki had shot it immediately, he would have scored. This is what he was looking at when he first got the puck.
This is what he was looking at when he released it after his delay.
But this is what he might have been looking at had he delayed a little more, delayed as long as he had planned. If you disregard the positioning of the goaltender, who obviously reacted to the original shot attempt that was blocked, his plan was not without merit. There probably would have been more space for him to score that tying goal.
There is a difference between not waiting and not waiting enough. One is a panic move, the other is a miscalculation. And that is the difference that makes Nick Suzuki unique.
The term cerebral is abused in hockey. It is overused. But it is difficult to describe Suzuki a different way. He not only thinks the game, but it is possible to visibly watch him thinking the game.
He is a perfect example of a player who would have benefited from playing in the AHL as a junior-age player. Watching him play against the best team in the OHL makes it obvious that – as Pete Rose once said of Brooks Robinson – Suzuki belongs in a higher league because he has spent this season managing situations he will not face in the NHL, and likely would not have faced in the AHL, either.
But in the OHL, Suzuki needs to adjust the way he plays because he is likely to play upwards of 25 minutes a night. So he can’t go all out on every shift, because he will be right back out there two minutes later. And again two minutes after that. And so on, and so on, game after game after game.
That last-minute shot at the end of Game 2 against the 67’s came as Suzuki was completing a stretch where he played 4:47 of the final six minutes and at least eight of the final 11 minutes of the game. This happens in junior hockey. It never happens in the NHL.
“In junior I know I’m playing almost 25 minutes a night, so I like to pick where I’m at my full speed,” Suzuki said. “When I know I can get to spots just by reading the play, I don’t have to skate as hard to get there because I’m reading the play ahead of time. It’s just instincts and being smart. If you watch NHL games, guys are in the right spots all the time. It doesn’t mean they’re not working hard; they’re just reading the play before it gets there.”
This is what NHL teams often say they want their top prospects to experience. To dominate in junior. To play massive minutes. It’s better to be over than under ripe. This is conventional wisdom, and maybe Suzuki is proof of it. He has indeed improved the pace in his game, just as the Canadiens hoped in sending him back to junior this season. But that improvement in his pace – which refers to quickness in decision making more so than actual speed – has come in a context where he needs to slow the game down to accommodate the massive minutes he is logging. Minutes he is never likely to reach again as long as he plays hockey.
But maybe Suzuki’s ability to slow down a game that is increasing in speed with each passing year is his greatest strength.
“The casual fan might say, well, he doesn’t work hard,” Guelph coach George Burnett said. “But I think conserving it and knowing when to go and when to jump and when to glide and when to be a little bit more patient I think are talents that elite players have, and he has those.”
Ottawa goalie Mikey DiPietro has played with and against Suzuki throughout his minor hockey career. He has seen how dangerous he can be first-hand for years. And he considers Suzuki’s ability to play the game at his own speed as a very dangerous quality.
“Growing up, Nick’s always been a phenomenal player,” said DiPietro, the Vancouver Canucks prospect facing Suzuki and the Storm in goal for the 67’s before he was injured in Game 2. “It just seems way easier, his ability to slow the game down and kind of dictate the play. He’s a special talent.
“Nick’s able to find the soft areas on the ice. When he is able to slow down the play it allows him to find seams that some players may not be able to see. He’s a special talent with a special skill set to be able to do so and he’s a gamebreaker.”
Here is a really subtle example of what DiPietro is talking about. Suzuki (No. 9 in white) waits for the puck as it slowly rolls along the boards to him and then, once he’s done waiting, he does something unexpected. He waits some more.
https://cdn.theathletic.c...ng-boards-and-dump-in.mp4
This came toward the end of the first period of Game 1 against Ottawa, again, a time some players would be in a rush but Suzuki instead decided to slow things down. It is not something you will ever find on a highlight reel, but it led to something that absolutely would have gone viral had Suzuki managed to finish this play in the dying seconds of the period.
https://cdn.theathletic.c...angle-and-chance_edit.mp4
It is this last play that is the eye-popping one, the one that puts Suzuki’s skill on full display. But it is the first play, the routine dump in under no pressure, that may be more indicative of Suzuki’s overall game.
“It’s just being patient with the puck,” Suzuki explained when asked about the play the next day. “A lot of guys are over-backchecking a lot of the times. I think if you can see that all the numbers are coming back, I just go the other way and create more time for myself to find some open ice.
“I don’t think it was that special of a play.”
It wasn’t. But it was smart. And that’s the point.
“It’s certainly a strength and it’s something that’s going to allow him to be a real good player at the pro level, where he can change gears and create space for himself, but it’s also to create space and deception on the players he’s playing against, the angles at which he shoots the puck and holds the puck, he’s an elite player in that area,” Burnett said. “He has great wheels and just flat out speed, but I think the guys that have the top wheels are able to adjust. So for him to be able to hold a step and then take off with a couple of quick steps and get to top speed and break free and create space and time for himself to be a goal scorer and a setup guy, it is certainly a strength that he has.”
When Suzuki was traded to the Storm he was reunited with someone he spent his entire childhood playing with, Philadelphia Flyers prospect Isaac Ratcliffe. Suzuki moved in with Ratcliffe’s billet family, they became linemates and they were once again joined at the hip, just as they were growing up together in London, Ont.
Few people have watched Suzuki’s growth as a player as closely as Ratcliffe, and no one has benefited more.
“He’s one of the best playmakers I’ve ever seen, let alone played with,” Ratcliffe said. “I’ve benefited a ton from the decisions he’s been able to make on the ice. He sees the ice so well and sometimes, maybe lurking in the shadows and come out, he’ll still find a way to put the puck in the net or set up a goal or even stop a goal.
“It doesn’t always show, and that’s the beauty of it.”
There’s that word again. Lurking.
And while Suzuki’s ability to lurk in the offensive zone frees him up for scoring opportunities, Ratcliffe correctly points out this helps Suzuki in the defensive zone as well, an area of the ice he has always taken very seriously.
Here are two examples, coming a few minutes apart in the first period of Game 2 against Ottawa. In the first one, Suzuki quite literally appears out of nowhere to break up a zone entry at the Guelph blueline and secure possession of the puck.
https://cdn.theathletic.c...ensive-lurking-part-1.mp4
Here he is a few minutes later, a subtle stick lift to secure possession of the puck behind his own net, a nifty little toe drag to get past the first forechecker, a quick outlet pass and the Storm is out of the zone and on the attack.
https://cdn.theathletic.c...akout-Ratcliffe-quote.mp4
“He’s never a guy that’s going to be in the spotlight but if you watch his game, if you kind of go one-on-one with him for the full 60 minutes, you see the little things that he does that go unnoticed,” Ratcliffe said. “As his winger, you see those little things, how he improves the game, how he allows us to play in the offensive zone rather than the defensive zone.
“Just those little things he does change the game drastically.”
Little things rarely get people excited, but they count, especially when the player in question also does many big things. Like this, which you have surely seen by now.
Or this, from Guelph’s Game 3 win against Ottawa on Monday.
But little things are what make Suzuki special. One of those little things is just how cool of a head he has. He gets targeted every game and never reacts, never lets the added attention distract him from what he is trying to do. At the end of his first shift of Game 2 of the series, as Suzuki was skating to the bench, 67’s forward Graeme Clarke intercepted him and gave him two solid cross-checks right to the chest behind the play. No one caught it. Suzuki brushed it off and continued on his way off the ice.
Then there was this, a clear high-stick during a Guelph power play in Game 1, one that fells Suzuki but doesn’t prevent him from protecting the puck and maintaining possession for the Storm. Suzuki did not complain, he kept playing. And his team got a scoring chance moments later.
https://cdn.theathletic.c...stick-stays-with-play.mp4
“Every time I try to do something about it, I feel I just waste my energy yelling or trying to talk to them,” Suzuki said. “I try to just stay away from that now. I think it makes them more mad if I just don’t say anything and just play through it. They’re trying to get under my skin, that’s fine. You’ve just got to play through it. Everybody has somebody coming after them.”
One thing that is clear is that Suzuki does not have energy to waste.
“First of all, he has a very calm demeanour about him,” Burnett said. “He doesn’t get rattled. When the emotions are high, he stays very level-headed and cool. He’s got guys poking at him and sticking him – he’s competitive and willing to pay a price to create space for himself and/or a teammate to make a play, but the key thing for him is he doesn’t waste any energy.”
Suzuki’s year in Guelph stands in stark contrast to what Jesperi Kotkaniemi experienced this season playing for the Canadiens, and it is a question worth asking as to which player benefited more. Was it Suzuki, used on both special teams, playing every situation, late in games and logging tons of minutes against inferior competition? Or was it Kotkaniemi, trying to survive in the best league in the world, scratching and clawing for every minute he could get but still learning what it takes to compete and thrive in the NHL against the best competition possible?
It’s difficult to say. But Suzuki was watching what was happening with Kotkaniemi in Montreal, and though he wouldn’t say it, he had to be pondering that exact same question himself.
“I watched a lot of him; any chance I got I was trying to watch the Montreal games,” Suzuki said. “The way he progressed throughout the season, he was getting better and better as the season went on. He was scoring some pretty nice goals, big goals for them. I was talking to him throughout the season a little bit over Snapchat; he had a great season. He’s a year younger than me, so it’s pretty crazy for him to be doing what he did.”
The Canadiens had someone at each of the first two games of the OHL final. General manager Marc Bergevin was at Game 1, and assistant GM Trevor Timmins was at Game 2. But Bergevin didn’t come alone; he brought Laval Rocket coach Joël Bouchard with him.
There is no doubt Suzuki would prefer not playing for Bouchard next season. He wants to play in the NHL, and he wants to do it as soon as possible.
“No I’ve never even seen him in the arena,” Suzuki said of Bergevin. “He hasn’t said anything to me. I don’t think most GMs would come – I don’t know how it works – but he doesn’t seem like a guy who will come talk to you after games. It’s nice that they’re coming to watch.
“I just need to show them the player I am and try to put my best foot forward for them.”
Suzuki has done that and more. He’s played the massive minutes in junior. He’s dominated. He’s overcome things he will not face at the next level. He also hasn’t faced the altogether different challenges – the higher baseline of skill, the physicality, the intensity, the scrutiny – he will face as a professional.
But while he has a lot left to prove, there is one thing Suzuki has that will help him thrive, an attribute he shares with Kotkaniemi, one that might help set him apart in the NHL jungle.
He has a hockey brain.
