NHL Network ranks Nick Suzuki as the NHL's 9th-best center in its recent rankings. We disagree; read on to find out why.
For a third year in a row, Montreal Canadiens’ captain Nick Suzuki has made NHL Network’s Top 20 centers right now list. Back in 2024, he made the list for the first time and was deemed the 16th-best center in the league. Last year, he made the top 10, landing in 10th place. This year? He kept moving up but only landed in ninth place, which is, quite frankly, somewhat surprising given that those rankings so far seemed to really value recent performance.
Who are the nine centers that are deemed better than Suzuki? Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Macklin Celebrini, Leon Draisaitl, Aleksander Barkov, Jack Eichel, Sidney Crosby, and Auston Matthews. It’s hard to argue with the top four; McDavid, MacKinnon, Celebrini, and Draisaitl are in a special class, offensively speaking. However, Barkov didn’t play last season, so he gets fifth place solely based on his body of work before he suffered that season-ending knee injury. Unlike the top four, Barkov isn't all about points; he has three Frank J. Selke trophies (2021, 2024, and 2025) to his name and is an absolute pain to play against, given how much he excels defensively. He also captained the Florida Panthers to two Stanley Cups, and that probably weighs in the balance.
However, Suzuki scored more points (101 in 82 games) than Eichel (90 points in 74 games), Crosby (74 points in 68 games), and Matthews (53 points in 60 games). If you project their production over 82 games, Eichel would have scored 100 points, Crosby 89 points, and Matthews 72 points. Suzuki was arguably the most valuable player on his team from that list; he finished fifth in Hart Trophy voting, while Crosby was 12th, and Eichel and Matthews were nowhere to be seen in that vote.
The Habs’ captain also won the Frank J. Selke Trophy as the league’s top defensive forward, meaning that he beat them all on the other side of the puck. The one area in which he didn’t dominate that trio of players was at the faceoff dot. He had a 50.5% success rate, lower than Crosby (55.2%) and Matthews (59.7%) but higher than Eichel 47.7%.
As fantastic a career as Crosby has, at 39, he has slowed down, which is normal; his leadership qualities are unaffected, though, from that standpoint, he may have the upper hand on Suzuki. That argument doesn’t hold against Eichel and Matthews. The Toronto Maple Leafs have won two playoff series since Matthews was picked first overall in the 2016 draft; Suzuki has led the Habs to two playoff series wins this season alone and to three more in 2021, including one against Matthews and the Leafs. You could also include the 2020 qualification round, which the Canadiens won against the Pittsburgh Penguins and Crosby.
At the end of the day, being included in the list is an honour for the Canadiens’ captain, and the ranking doesn’t matter much, but it’s still an interesting exercise to compare Suzuki to other top NHL centers and see how he fares. At 27 years old, it feels like he has yet to reach his ceiling, and one should expect to see him go even higher in this ranking next season.
It’s been quite a while since the Habs could boast about having players in each of the NHL rankings, and it shows just how much progress has been made. Jakub Dobes was deemed the 10th-best goaltender, Lane Hutson the sixth-best defenseman, and Cole Caufield the 9th-best winger, on top of Suzuki being the 9th-best center. It’s often been said that the future is bright in Montreal, but so is the present.
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