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 came out 70-46 against an expected 54-51.
| 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.
51.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 66th percentile. His on-ice goals were 70-46 against an expected 54.1-51.2 — 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 245 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.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
7 of his 30 goals late or in overtime, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.10 penalty minutes a game over 82, 2nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“The passing is the best on the club and the most underrated in the league.”
“He protects the puck well below the goal line and wins more battles than the frame suggests, and he does not initiate contact anywhere.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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
- 51.4%
- 66th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52%
- 73rd 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: 70 for, 46 against. Expected: 54.1 and 51.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 30 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 637 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 80th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.29 a game
- Distance
- 3.20 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.2 mph
- 61st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
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 51.4% — 2.8 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 | 51.8% | 48.7% | 36.9% |
| Juraj Slafkovský | 51.8% | 50.4% | 43.3% |
| Mike Matheson | 47.5% | 55.2% | 46.1% |
51.8% together, 48.7% for him apart and 36.9% for Caufield apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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.