Montreal Canadiens: Nick Suzuki Showing Sign He Could Be Future First Line Center

The Montreal Canadiens acquired Nick Suzuki as the key piece in the Max Pacioretty deal. As a 20 year old rookie he is already showing signs he could be a first line centre.

The Montreal Canadiens have one of the most dominant possession lines in the National Hockey League. Phillip Danault centres Brendan Gallagher and Tomas Tatar and the trio creates chances and limits opponents opportunities on a nightly basis. They have posted some of the best possession numbers in the league for the past two seasons.

The only problem with the line is none of the players have ever scored 60 points in a single season. They are terrific defensively, and all three of them chip in offence, but none of them have proven to be more than decent offensive producers. Tomas Tatar is on pace for a career year right now, but has never scored more than the 58 points he had during his first season in Montreal.

A line of Danault, Gallagher and Tatar does a lot of things right and is an enviable asset. Having an effective line that can go out against the other team’s top line every night and control the play the majority of time is a great start for a franchise.

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What the Habs need is another line that is capable of scoring with even greater frequency. An amazing two-way line is great, but the Canadiens have often not had enough depth scoring, or worse, have had their top scorer peaking at 55-60 points in the past. That kind of a team is just too easy to shutdown come playoff time.

Finding a line that has the potential to score closer to a point per game is what separates contenders from whatever the Canadiens are right now. The Habs need someone, especially a centre that can take over a scoring role and create scoring chances on a regular basis.

Well, Nick Suzuki isn’t quite there yet, but he is quickly trending in that direction.

Acquired as the big piece in the Max Pacioretty trade a year and a half ago, Suzuki has developed at lightning speed. He set the OHL on fire last year, scoring 94 points in the regular season and then dominating the playoffs by scoring 42 points in 24 games for the Guelph Storm, leading them to an OHL Championship.

Suzuki carried his strong play into training camp with the Canadiens last fall. He played well enough in the exhibition games to earn a spot on the opening night roster. He had a few growing pains early on and was moved down to the fourth line for a while. He started to build up his confidence from there and has turned into an offensive threat lately.

After starting slowly with six points in his first 17 games, Suzuki had an impressive spurt with six points in six games. Then he had his worst game of the year where he finished minus-four against the Boston Bruins in a blowout. That began a ten game stretch where he had zero goals and three points.

Since then, Suzuki has been an offensive threat every night for the Habs. The London, Ontario native figured things out offensively and has scored 18 points in his last 21 games. The increased offence comes at the same time we see Suzuki’s ice time being increased on a regular basis. Four times he has played more than 20 minutes as he has become a regular in the top six, contributes on the power play and has even been used while killing penalties. Suzuki is also one of the Canadiens most dangerous players during 3-on-3 overtime.

Suzuki scoring 18 points in 21 games has him scoring at a 70 point pace over the course of a full season for that stretch of games. It is a smallish sample size but for a rookie 20 year old it is a long enough stretch of great hockey to make us believe he could be the future first line center that this team so desperately needs.

When the Habs drafted Jesperi Kotkaniemi, they believed he would be a top center. Danault has played well in the first line center role and Max Domi showed up and scored 72 points as a center last year.

When Suzuki made the Canadiens out of training camp, it seemed impossible he would get to play center this year. With his exceptional play over the past 21 games, he has been playing the middle with Joel Armia and Ilya Kovalchuk on his wings lately. The trio have been dangerous offensively every single game they have played together and Suzuki has been just fine defensively while playing the middle of the ice.

He has all the tools to play the role and has shown over a quarter of an NHL season that he can score at nearly a point per game pace. At first, he seemed destined to be a winger long term for the Habs. It just might turn out that Suzuki is the first line center for this team for a very long time.