Yup. As much as we're gushing about him I think he's still being underrated because this season is being treated like it's his ceiling. The idea seems to be that he's leveled up from a 60P guy to a 70-80P guy who might flirt with 90P occasionally, but the way I see it is that he's currently on a 90P pace with his linemates pacing for 51P and 70P while having Selke-level defensive upside and all the intangibles you could ever ask for.
I love Slaf and Cole but they're not Rantanen, Stone, Reinhart, Pastrnak, or Kucherov. We've never seen Suzuki with a true top-flight winger and he'll end up breaking into that 90-100 point range with Demidov. All this "we need a 1C above Suzuki" stuff we're still seeing is just silliness. No shit we'd be a better team if we had McDavid 1C and Suzuki 2C but that's never happening. Nick is the guy and we should be thrilled about that. There are five guys on the planet clearly better (and one is Matthews who's never proven it in the playoffs) and he's competitive with anyone you'd put in that next tier below the generational/superstar talents. Like, people are just reflexively putting Brayden Point in a tier above him. Do we think Nick would struggle to hit 95P if he played with Kucherov? There's this impulse to downplay him to not look like a "homer" but the NHL media consensus is that f***ing Scheifele is better than Suzuki so who cares what the main boards or Sportsnet thinks.
It's not like the Crosby-Malkin Penguins are the only model for a cup winner. This is a league where teams won cups with Eric Staal, O'Reilly, and Kuznetsov as their 1Cs and we're nervous about trying to compete with a guy who's putting himself in the Toews, Barkov, Eichel, Getzlaf, Point Bergeron, Kopitar category? It's like having a super hot girlfriend who loves you, makes a lot of money, is a great cook, smart, funny, doesn't make you watch reality TV etc. and bitching that you're not dating Sydney Sweeney. Stupid.
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