Nick Suzuki’s résumé keeps growing, but the spotlight still hasn’t fully caught up.
The Montréal Canadiens centreman crossed the 100-point line for the first time in his NHL career last season, won his first Selke Trophy, and finished as the team’s leader in points and assists. At 27, he has stacked up the kind of season that usually pushes a player into the league’s top-tier conversation. Instead, Suzuki still seems to sit just outside it.
That’s a little strange when you look at the full picture. Over seven NHL seasons, Suzuki has never taken a step backward in points from one year to the next.
He started with 41 points in 2019-20 and has climbed steadily ever since, capping it off with a breakout run that sent him past the 100-point mark. Last season, he ranked sixth in the NHL in points, fifth in assists, second in power-play points, and 11th in faceoff wins.
His 63-game pace of one point per game was second in the league, trailing only Connor McDavid.
Suzuki also earned his first shot with the Canadian Olympic team and scored two goals in six games. On top of that, he became the first Canadiens player to win the Frank J. Selke Trophy since Guy Carbonneau in 1991-92.
And yet, the broader NHL conversation still hasn’t fully embraced him.
Part of the disconnect shows up in the numbers around him. Suzuki is entering the fifth year of an eight-year deal that carries a $7.85 million AAV, and he remains Montréal’s top centreman heading into next season. Among first-line centres, that salary ranks 21st per year, a useful snapshot of both the Canadiens’ roster-building and the way Suzuki continues to be priced like a player who has more to prove than he really does.
The respect gap was there in Hart Trophy voting, too. Suzuki got just one first-place vote last season, even though he could have made a strong case as Montréal’s best player. Only Nikita Kucherov, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Macklin Celebrini finished ahead of him, a group loaded with names that already live in the league’s mainstream spotlight.
The same pattern showed up again in 2025. Suzuki finished as the third-highest Canadian in points in the calendar year, behind only McDavid and MacKinnon. He also ended up ahead of players like Celebrini and Sidney Crosby, two stars who are never short on attention.
Even at the Olympic Games in Milano-Cortina, the conversation drifted away from Suzuki. Some analysts pushed for Brad Marchand to take his place in the quarter-finals and argued that Suzuki was holding back MacKinnon, despite Suzuki ranking as the sixth-best Canadian in offence heading into that round.
That’s the contradiction with Suzuki right now: the production is already there, the hardware is starting to pile up, and the numbers keep pointing upward. Even a projected 98 points next season would still put him in the mix with many of the league’s best centremen. If he keeps doing what he’s been doing, the recognition should eventually catch up.
In Other News...
Canadiens Prospect Debate Is Heating Up For One Surprising Reason
The Canadiens prospect conversation got a little more interesting when the NHLs official site slotted Gleb Pugachyov ahead of Alexander Zharovsky on its latest organizational ranking. Pugachyov, taken 26th overall, fits the kind of sturdy power-forward mold teams often trust more readily, while Zharovsky has been drawing attention for his offensive touch and a strong recent run in the KHL.
For Montreal, the order says as much about projection as it does about production. Zharovsky may have the flashier scoring resume, but NHL.com appears to be weighing Pugachyovs broader safety net more heavily, which makes the gap between the two a useful snapshot of how different evaluators can see the same pool of talent very differently. [Read more 🡒]
Zachary Bolduc Is Pushing For A Bigger Canadiens Role Fast
Zachary Bolduc is wasting no time making his intentions clear as he settles into life with the Canadiens. The forward said he wants to earn a bigger role and more ice time by putting in the work at training camp, and hes keeping the focus on what he can control rather than trying to script his place in the lineup. For a Montreal team always sorting through its depth, that kind of approach fits the environment as much as the talent does.
Bolducs case for a larger opportunity starts with last season, when he put up 30 points in 78 games. Now the challenge is turning that production into trust, which is often the real currency in camp. He knows role decisions belong to the coach, but the message is pretty direct: if he keeps pushing, he wants to move up the depth chart and make it impossible to ignore him. [Read more 🡒]