We have some training camp notes, especially with a full day of exhibition games. Before we get to that, though, make sure to grab your copy of the 2022-23 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide! It has projections, expected line combinations, rookie/prospect upsides, and a whole lot more. It is also updated whenever there is news so there are no concerns about out-of-date information. Help support what we do year-round by getting your copy today!

• The New York Islanders are being very cautious with Alex Romanov as he comes off shoulder surgery. Something to monitor because there could be guys on the bottom pair with sneaky fantasy value if Romanov misses time just because of the way they spread out the minutes.
• This is without Tyler Toffoli and Jack Hughes on the ice, so grain of salt and all that, but Alex Holtz was on the top PP unit in practice for New Jersey along with Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, and Jesper Bratt. Holtz is someone I've been high on since his draft and thought he might make an impact last year. Maybe this is the year he reminds everyone why he was drafted ahead of Jack Quinn, Marco Rossi, and Cole Perfetti.
• After an injury scare on the weekend, Mika Zibanejad was at Rangers practice on Monday but in a non-contact jersey. If the injury concern was significant, he wouldn't have been on the ice at all, so it seems as if it's nothing to worry over. It looks like Alexis Lafrenière is staying on Chris Kreider's line for now, and it's worth noting that in his brief career, Lafrenière's points rate at 5-on-5 increases 34% when he has Zibanejad as his centre.
• The Islanders are keeping Oliver Wahlstrom on Casey Cizikas's line. Maybe this is just a case of easing him in after his return from injury, but any hopes of a breakout are being dashed day by day as he stays in the bottom-6 mix.
• Montreal's top line for their exhibition game was Slafkovsky-Newhook-Anderson. Colour me intrigued as to how that can (or can't) work.
• Joel Farabee was on a line with Sean Couturier. Bobby Brink was on the other side but Travis Konecny wasn't in the game lineup. Looks like it will be Farabee-Couturier-Konecny to start the season but we'll see how things go. Tyson Foerster being on the third line of an exhibition game doesn't bode well for him making the team out of camp but, again, we'll see.
• Marco Rossi was not working with Minnesota's top PP unit. If the Wild are insistent on Rossi being a 3C/PP2 guy, then Joel Eriksson Ek is being undervalued in fantasy drafts.
• Taylor Hall and Ryan Donato were Connor Bedard's wingers at a Blackhawks intra-squad scrimmage. Interesting for Donato.
• Gabriel Vilardi remained on Winnipeg's top line and if he can manage some PP1 time to go along with it, that fantasy value will only go up.
• Evan Rodrigues was on the top line with Aleksander Barkov for Florida. It makes me wonder if Rodrigues might get top-line slotting for the season alongside Barkov and Carter Verhaeghe. Given Rodrigues's prodigious shot rates, it is a fantasy situation to monitor.

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One thing I love about writing about fantasy hockey is digging into what makes a player good/valuable, what changes they have/haven't made, what changes they need/do not need to make, and what it all says about their future. It is like putting together a puzzle where different parts of the picture change every so often, and that makes it a fun challenge every day.

Nick Suzuki is a player that fits this bill. At the outset of his career, Dobber Prospects updates were effusive about his creativity, speed, and playmaking ability in junior hockey 5-6 years ago. That gives us insight into what made him a coveted prospect at the time.

This is going to be an entire section devoted to Suzuki, what his career has been like so far, changes made both on the ice and behind the bench, and what it tells us about the player he is now and could be moving forward. This will inform us as to what kind of fantasy upside he really has, and whether he'll ever be a fantasy hockey star.

As usual, data will be from our Frozen Tools, Natural Stat Trick, or AllThreeZones, unless otherwise indicated.

Rookie Season

The shortened 2019-20 season was Suzuki's first in the NHL, and he ended up with 41 points in 71 games, finishing sixth in rookie scoring. That was the year Montreal had the great top line of Brendan Gallagher, Phillip Danault, and Tomas Tatar but not much for depth scoring behind them – Montreal's scoring went down 45% with that trio off the ice at 5-on-5. Suzuki's most common line mate at 5-on-5 was Max Domi, and they were only on the ice together for 26.6% of Suzuki's 5-on-5 ice time. That means Suzuki did not spend 30% of his ice time with any single forward. It was a rotation of several players, and that makes it hard to build a rapport with anyone.

He did show his penchant for playmaking, though, as his shot assists – helpers on teammate shots – was in the 78^th percentile of the league:

There wasn't much to speak of, shooting-wise, as his 5-on-5 shot attempt rate was that of a low-end third liner, but the passing/transition upside was already obvious. He led the team in offensive zone faceoff starts per minute, but the lack of help from his line mates did not do him favours.

The Bubble 2020 Season

This was the season where Suzuki's upside really started becoming obvious. His pedestrian expected goal metrics exploded from a negative impact in his rookie year (per Evolving Hockey) to one that was comparable to a mid-tier first-line forward like Johnny Gaudreau and Clayton Keller. Some of his numbers looked poor because the team had a .904 save percentage with him on the ice at 5-on-5, or a 20^th percentile mark across the league. It was actually a mark that was in the middle of the team, though, and stellar two-way players like Tatar and Tyler Toffoli were worse. Despite Montreal's good goaltending in the postseason, the regular season was rough.

The importance of this season for Suzuki can be broken down into two parts: his playmaking and how the team was asked to play. As for his playmaking, he was reasonably above average by scoring chance assist rates (helpers on teammate scoring chances) at 5-on-5 that season, putting up similar numbers (3.26/60 minutes) to Filip Forsberg and Jordan Staal. It was far from elite, but still good, and a good sign for him as a sophomore.  

As to how the team played, it was a curious mix for Suzuki. He led Montreal that year in controlled zone entries per minute – better than Tatar or Danault – but did not create much off the rush. Montreal did play off the rush a fair bit as a team but were 8^th in the league in offence created off the forecheck. It was a mix of both forechecking and counterattack, but Suzuki played much more off the former than the latter.

That year, Suzuki's most common line mate was Jonathan Drouin. With those two on the ice at 5-on-5, this is where HockeyViz has Montreal shooting from (red is above league average, blue is below, and the darker shades are where rates were much higher or lower):

That shows some shots from the point, but a lot from the slot and little from the circles. Keep that in mind.

The Tumultuous 2021-22 Season

After the Cup Final run in 2021, hopes were high for Montreal in 2021-22 but things fell apart under coach Dominique Ducharme. Through the end of January 2022, or the first 44 games of the season, Montreal was 31^st by expected goal share at 5-on-5, dead last by actual goal share, and 30^th by goals scored per minute. Cole Caufield was sent to the AHL at one point and the Habs were destined for the Draft Lottery. They went from a team creating both off the rush and off the cycle to a team that did neither.

Few players had good seasons to that point. Gallagher and Artturi Lehkonen were solid contributors but that's about where the good news ended. Suzuki had good numbers with those players but not much with anyone else, at least not until Martin St. Louis was hired in early February of 2022. That season, these were the splits for the Suzuki-Caufield duo under each coach at 5-on-5:

• Under Ducharme: 43.1 shot attempts and 1.5 goals per 60 minutes
• Under St. Louis: 52.7 shot attempts and 3.6 goals per 60 minutes

The turnaround was immediate and obvious. Remember that viz above that showed Montreal creating shots from the middle but not much from the faceoff circles? Here is what they did in 2021-22 with Caufield-Suzuki on the ice:

Some of those minutes include time with Ducharme but nearly 80% is under St. Louis. The immediate change would portend things to come – focusing on quality shots and playing off the rush rather than funneling pucks to the slot and looking to forecheck. It is why there are more shots from the circles and beside the goalie’s posts.

From a fantasy perspective, one big issue about this season – something that persists still – is Suzuki took his mediocre shot rates and nuked them further. Whether under Ducharme (7.93 attempts/60) or under St. Louis (9.98), Suzuki abandoned his shooting to focus on his playmaking. This helped Caufield's goal scoring over the final 30 games, but it's something that hurts Suzuki's fantasy profile.

The last change St. Louis made was using Suzuki less for defensive faceoffs. Jake Evans had often been used by Ducharme, but Suzuki wasn't too far behind. That changed under St. Louis as he went from the Montreal forward with the third-highest defensive zone starts on the team to the sixth highest. The net change in raw numbers wasn't much as the team started less in the offensive zone overall, but his role changed immediately under St. Louis and the revamped offence paid dividends for both him and Caufield.

The 2022-23 Season

And now we get to last season. As mentioned in prior Ramblings, teams across the NHL are funneling fewer pucks to the middle to hope for a deflection or a rebound, and more seam passes or back-door tap-ins. That changes the value of shots, from a statistical perspective, and it means the expected goals models are figuring that out in real time.

Stylistically, Caufield and Suzuki maintained their play of focusing on those seam/backdoor passes rather than jamming the middle, which is obvious by where Montreal shot from with them on the ice:

In 151-plus minutes at 5-on-5 under Ducharme, Suzuki-Caufield generated 26.9 shots, 2.7 goals, and 10.1% shooting at 5-on-5. Since St. Louis took over, it's 27.8 shots, 3.5 goals, and 12.4% shooting. The offensive improvements are apparent, and we can see it both in the way they play and the offence that is actually produced.

Suzuki started carrying the puck a lot off the rush and was one of the league leaders in controlled zone entry rates per minute. In fact, by controlled zone entry rates and converting those entries into actual scoring chances, his company was elite:

That red circle of four players? Other than Suzuki, it's Johnny Gaudreau, Sebastian Aho, and Roope Hintz. So, yeah, not bad company for carrying the puck and actually creating offence at a high-end rate.

The defensive issues have persisted since that Bubble season, though. Montreal allowed a lot of shots from in tight no matter who was on the ice, but things were bad with Caufield-Suzuki on the ice and remained after the Caufield injury.

There is a catch here, and the catch being how bad the Montreal blue line was last year. It was a slew of rookies and then a slew of injuries. It is why we need to note that Caufield-Suzuki had nearly average defensive metrics with Jonathan Kovacevic on the blue line behind them:

But things got really hairy when Kovacevic was off the ice:

Even setting aside the rookie season from Kovacevic, the Habs got over 200 games last season from rookie rearguards. Kovacevic was also the only defenceman, rookie or not, to play more than 65 games. This was a bad defensive team that was giving a lot of younger players their first taste of full-time NHL action. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a lot of their forwards had bad defensive metrics, with a handful being better than average and only Kirby Dach being close to a first-line defensive impact.

It was a very good offensive season for Suzuki, but the shot problems remain. He was literally in the 10^th percentile for shot attempts per minute at 5-on-5 last year, ranking worse than Ivan Barbashev, whose career-high shot total for a single season is 126. Had Suzuki not played so many minutes, and all 82 games, he would not have come so close to two shots per game (1.98) as he did.

Sum of All Years

I recognize that, as a Habs fan, I may be trying to rationalize Suzuki's poor defensive metrics because I am invested in him being good defensively, on top of his offensive prowess, for the future success of this franchise.

I do think, however, that there is a lot of context needed for his career. This is a forward whose first two years in the league produced expected goals against metrics – per Evolving Hockey – among the absolute elite in the NHL; he was 8^th among all regular forwards from 2019-2021 by those defensive metrics, and not far behind former teammate Phillip Danault. Even under Ducharme in the first half of the 2021-22 season, Suzuki's relative expected goals against rate at 5-on-5 was much better than the average Montreal forward and rated closely across the league to guys like Hintz (again) and Nico Hischier. Over the two and a half seasons with Ducharme as his coach, Suzuki's 5-on-5 expected goals against rate relative to his teammates was excellent. That has changed dramatically under Martin St. Louis.

So, here's Suzuki, who had two and a half great seasons of defensive metrics under one coach but one and a half seasons of poor defensive metrics under another. He also had poor offensive production when playing under that first coach but much better offensive production under the next. It has really been a Jekyll-and-Hyde performance in his four years.

If a player with four seasons under his belt has shown the ability to create great chances for his teammates over a 1 ½ season sample, and elite defensive ability in the other 2 ½ seasons, with the team overhauling how they play offensively, it leads me to believe it's a young player on a young team still figuring out how to put it all together. Whether he puts it all together or not, the next couple of seasons will tell us, but when any player shows high-end ability at both ends of the ice, it is not far-fetched to think they'll be able to do both at the same time in a more stable environment as the team around him develops.

Maybe it's rose-coloured glasses but given the tumult Montreal has gone through over the last two years, I still think Suzuki puts it all together and becomes an excellent two-way player akin to Ryan O'Reilly. Maybe he doesn't, and this is what he is moving forward, but what he's already shown in his young career has earned him the benefit of the doubt. Let's have this conversation again in two years to see where things stand.

For fantasy hockey purposes, this is a case where real-life value may not translate to fantasy value. There are a lot of players like that – Quinn Hughes and Anthony Cirelli come to mind – so we have to be careful in the fantasy game. If he doesn't start shooting more, he runs the risk of turning into an O'Reilly-type player in terms of both real-life and fantasy value. That would be great for Habs fans, and bad for fantasy owners. For us fantasy managers, we need to see a lot more shooting in the next year or two. Picking up that hit rate again would be nice, too.