60 points while playing on the worst team in the league is something...
Player Discussion Nick Suzuki Part 11
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Wright, Cooley, Nemec, Jiricek, Slaf, Nazar. I think those SHOULD be the top 6. Nazar might fall behind though. People are like high on Ost, Yurov, Savoie, Kemmel and some others. But IMO Nazar is the 3rd best center at least, and probably should be 3rd or 4th forward taken.
Anyway, Habs should be in that top 5. So really, if they walked away with any of those 6, I think it's a great first pick. Yurov, Ostlund, Kemmel, there going to be some nice wings in the draft. Even Savoie, whom I think will end up on the wing ultimately. But I think if you have a top 5 pick in this draft, D and C are still best options. But Slaf might have the perfect package for Suzuki/Caufield. It would be a tough call. I think I'd prefer Nazar honestly. But might be hard for Habs not to take Slaf.
Either, way, It's possible one of those 3 centers eventually is good enough to move Suzuki down to 2C. If they really don't want another Center though, and HAD to pick a wing, it's Slaf.Even though some are down on him after this year, I think he's still the best package at wing. Kemmel, Ost and Yurov maybe after ? Eh... and Savoie I think is just tiny. Would have a hard time with him and Caufield both on the wings. But no matter what, they should get a terrific prospect.
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Lafleurs Guy
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Be glad we’re finally rebuilding. It’s long overdue.
And 60 points doesn’t seem like much but it’s great considering how slow we started. Still can’t believe CC had only one goal coming into mid February under DD.
Being - 33 is not great though. That being said even Bergeron had a -28 and BOS was not as bad as the Habs this year.
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In a season with so many 100 point players I'm not impressed by squeezing to 60pts and minus a bajillion. That's well below Plekanec level even.
I have high hopes he pulls it together next year and becomes even more adept, confident, and capable -- more productive and effective. Onward and upward because we have no hope to win anything in the next eight years if he remains a 60 point C who is minus a bajillion.
All that said... congrats to him for breaking his career high by nearly 20 points and enduring this horribly difficult season. He had nobody to play with other than rookie Caufield. The third most points on the Habs has less than 35, that's 2000-2003 Habs level bad.
I have high hopes he pulls it together next year and becomes even more adept, confident, and capable -- more productive and effective. Onward and upward because we have no hope to win anything in the next eight years if he remains a 60 point C who is minus a bajillion.
All that said... congrats to him for breaking his career high by nearly 20 points and enduring this horribly difficult season. He had nobody to play with other than rookie Caufield. The third most points on the Habs has less than 35, that's 2000-2003 Habs level bad.
JuJu Mobb
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Plekanec hit 70 points in his career. Suzuki has not (yet). Not every player develops in a linear progression... Like I said, I hope he does and he keeps growing. He's a very smart player, and imo a better playmaker than Plekanec ever was.
Plekanec had 2 seasons that beats Suzuki's current season.
69 points at 25 years old.
70 points at 27 years old.
Suzuki will reach higher points total than Plekanec, maybe as soon as next season.
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Hins77
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Suzuki is currently playing against man, cause he is just 22 yo. I’m very curious how much he will produce when he is gonna be 25/26/27 years old on his prime, with an older Caufield, better goalie and better linemates (I hope). In his prime, I think he is gonna be a ppg
tooji
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60 pts is impressive when it’s 20 points more than the highest on the team, and when the 2nd highest scored like 75% of their points in the 2nd half of the season. It’s honestly quite an accomplishment.
If Suzuki was on toronto or tampa he’d have been nearly ppg this year
If Suzuki was on toronto or tampa he’d have been nearly ppg this year
If you watched Nick Suzuki play this year and a key takeaway is that his plus/minus is indicative of severe problems with his defensive game I'm really not sure what player you're watching. I get the point is you want him to be better going forward but it's just not really a meaningful critique at all. At 5v5 he was a -9 as a rookie, -2 last season, and -18 this year. Don't really think there's any good reason to believe that the logical explanation is he's now Max Domi in his own end and not that the whole team sucks.
He was -18 at 5v5 and the remainder to take him to -33 was all empty nets and SHG nonsense. Plus/minus is junk for this reason, almost half of that number below zero comes from empty nets and shorties which are just garbage minuses to care about. The green jacket always goes to the top offensive players on bad teams because they're on the ice all the time when their bad team is down a goal with the net empty and that becomes proof of their apparent defensive flaws.
It's pretty difficult for me to have a problem with a -18 at even strength from the 1C of the 32nd place team in the league which used Ben Chiarot as their #1D for 54 games, had Montembeault and Primeau play in 50 games, and traded away their two best veteran forwards, #2D, and #4D in the weeks leading up to the deadline. Especially when he was the only forward posing any threat to the oppo the entire season and was saddled with an ice cold Caufield and useless Hoffman most of the time before the coaching change.
As for the rest...I dunno man. I swear to god the playoffs have been memory holed from people's minds the way people talk about this player. I don't understand the negativity at all, he didn't score much when the team was miserable playing for a historically bad coach and then he was about PPG the rest of the year with a non-historically bad coach. If you want to be a doomer about it being "only 60 points" be my guest but I don't really understand the impulse.
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You’re totally right. In my defence I’ll say that the impulse comes from 20+ years of following the Habs and having to cheer for less than exciting players who are far from being stars. I don’t want another Plekanec, as good as he was. I want a real 1 C we can rely on. Hopefully it’ll be Suzuki.
As for the playoffs, I think you need to concede that the playoff run was more mirage than fact. It was the Carey Price show. With him gone everybody looks worse, Suzuki too. We need another player of Carey Price’s level at forward.
100%.
You give Suzuki a Marner/Nylander and he’s either PPG or pretty damn close. Just look at his production since Caufield found his game, pretty much PPG.
Suzuki will put up 70+ next year. Take it to the bank.
Yeah that's absolutely fair and I understand the impulse. I'm hopeful that we still end up with at least one and ideally two other forwards better than Suzuki/Caufield (or those guys taking a big leap, either/or is fine) and ideally a legitimate #1D as well to push the rest of our D prospects down the lineup.
For me it's just that if Suzuki ends up being our best forward that's a problem, but it's not really his fault and we're tanking right now anyway, so I don't see the point in getting down about it. Eg. Patrick Sharp was "only" a 30G 60P guy in his prime, and it would have been a problem for Chicago if he ended up being the best forward of their core, but that doesn't mean Chicago should have been nervous about him just because he wasn't Kane.
In terms of the team's competitive window 100% agreement that it was lightning in a bottle or a mirage etc. Weber and Price emptying the tanks while the depth came together perfectly to play in front of a superstar goalie going supernova is not something we can replicate ever again when those guys are both as good as gone.
I don't agree that what Suzuki and Caufield did on that stage was a mirage though, getting those players back there again is not in the cards for a little while, but they produced on their own accord and both players had huge moments deep in the playoffs against a Vegas team that should have been an extremely hard matchup on paper.
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HabsWhiteKnightLOL
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DramaticGloveSave
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David Suzuki
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Seems inevitable not sure who else could get it and he has a great personality for it IMO.
tooji
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It’s totally going to depend on caufield. If caufield approaches 40 goals, then I can see suzuki at 70-80pts next year
DramaticGloveSave
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And I think both of those things depend on whether we can finally get a power play going.
GermanHabsFan72
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Kudo Shinichi
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Suzuki finishes the season with a 49.6% faceoff win percentage. Great improvement
FrankMTL
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If not PPG, I hope he hits 70+ while continuing to be a great two way player...But he definitely has the potential to be PPG and higher eventually.
Benstheman
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As talented as Suzuki and CC are, they can't produce at ppg pace while other teams only have to defensively focus on them two. They will probably get there or near it when Habs have a good second line to support offense and some D that can distribute puck more efficiently.
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My prediction for next year, is Suzuki hits 20 + goals and 70 pts while Caufield gets 30 goals and 65 pts.
