Nick Suzuki

Last Season

Twenty-nine goals and 72 assists in all 82 games for 101 points, plus-37 — the best mark on the club — on nearly twenty-one minutes a night. He played 83 percent of his five-on-five ice time with Caufield, which is close to the tightest forward partnership in the league.

The Finesse Game

Nothing about him looks fast or violent. What he has instead is timing. He arrives at the top of the circles a half-second before the puck does, he holds it until a defender commits, and the pass goes to where his winger will be rather than where he is. Seventy-two assists is not an accident of linemates; the same winger scored 51 goals.

He is a better shooter than his reputation allows, particularly from the off wing on the power play, and he has become genuinely dangerous in tight after years of being purely a distributor.

The skating is average and always has been. He compensates by never being in a race — he reads the play early enough that he does not have to win one.

The Physical Game

Five-eleven and 207, thickly built, and much harder to knock off a puck than the height suggests. He is not a forechecker who finishes checks, and he does not need to be; he takes pucks with his stick and his positioning.

He has not missed games. Four straight full seasons is its own kind of value.

The Intangibles

He was the return in a trade that defined a rebuild, took the captaincy at twenty-two of a team that was the worst in the league, and has grown into it without a false step. The plus-37 on a young roster says as much about how he plays away from the puck as the 101 points say about the rest.

There is no obvious criticism left. The question about him now is only whether a first line centred by a player without elite speed holds up in a playoff series, and that will get answered soon.