This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Suzuki
Montreal Canadiens Center
89 points and a 17.4 per cent rate, and a line that was outscored 35-62 against an expected 51-53.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | MTL | 71 | 13 | 28 | 41 | -15 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 138 | 9.4 | 15:59 |
| 2020-21 | MTL | 56 | 15 | 26 | 41 | -5 | 26 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 110 | 13.6 | 18:11 |
| 2021-22 | MTL | 82 | 21 | 40 | 61 | -29 | 30 | 8 | 1 | 4 | 186 | 11.3 | 20:31 |
| 2022-23 | MTL | 82 | 26 | 40 | 66 | -13 | 33 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 162 | 16.1 | 21:06 |
| 2023-24 | MTL | 82 | 33 | 44 | 77 | -14 | 36 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 185 | 17.8 | 21:16 |
| 2024-25 | MTL | 82 | 30 | 59 | 89 | +19 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 9 | 172 | 17.4 | 20:04 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 455 | 138 | 237 | 375 | -57 | 139 | 42 | 7 | 18 | 953 | 14.5 | 19:41 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
30 goals and 59 assists in 82 games for 89 points, plus-19, on 20:04 a night with 9 game-winners — the most points on the club by 19.
48.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 39th percentile. His on-ice goals were 35-62 against an expected 50.9-53.3 — 16 goals missing at one end and 9 too many at the other, the largest combined gap on the roster. The plus-19 came almost entirely on special teams.
8 penalty minutes across 82 games.
The Finesse Game
The passing is the best on the club and the most underrated in the league. He plays a patient, deliberate game, holds pucks below the goal line, and delivers into space rather than onto a stick — 59 assists on a team that scored 231 goals is a genuine total.
17.4 per cent shooting on 172 attempts is well above his career rate and a third of them come from inside 20 feet, so the locations support something high without supporting that. He is a distributor who has learned to shoot, not the reverse.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 207, built low and strong. He protects the puck well below the goal line and wins more battles than the frame suggests, and he does not initiate contact anywhere.
8 penalty minutes in 82 games at 20 minutes a night is one of the two or three most disciplined seasons in this edition. He is never late.
The Intangibles
The captain at 26, seven seasons in the most demanding market in hockey, and a rise from a throw-in in a trade to a genuine first-line centre.
The projection is 85 points and a chance share that should improve as the club does. What his record does not yet contain is a defensive season worthy of the minutes — a 39th-percentile share for a first-line centre on a playoff club is the thing between him and being discussed as an elite one.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,143 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.9%
- 40th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.7%
- 61st pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 35 for, 62 against. Expected: 50.9 and 53.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 56 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 1143 minutes at five-on-five
- Kirby Dach13%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2024-25
- The club
- MTL took 48.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,143 minutes at five-on-five — 80th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cole Caufield | 49.2% | 46.7% | 41.1% |
| Juraj Slafkovský | 49.0% | 48.5% | 45.5% |
| Mike Matheson | 46.7% | 51.0% | 47.6% |
49.2% together, 46.7% for him apart and 41.1% for Caufield apart. Caufield was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Caufield than for him.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
256 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 30 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.