Two Montreal Canadiens skaters find themselves among the top defensive forwards in the league, according to Hockey Stat Cards.
Juraj Slafkovsky and captain Nick Suzuki are ranked third and sixth, respectively, in the metric, which uses Game Score to evaluate the impact of players throughout the NHL.
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It’s important to remember that this particular ranking only includes their defensive impact, and not their offensive value.
Montreal Canadiens Top Defensive Game Scores
We should also note that the overall defensive numbers are trending downwards, a result of the uptick in scoring we’re seeing in the NHL.
That being said, it’s far from surprising to see Suzuki among the NHL’s best, as he’s established himself as one of the better 200-foot players in the league, a tag that we tend to apply a little too often when discussing NHL players. In the past, saying a skater is a ‘200-foot-player’ would usually mean that they don’t provide much offence, while being stuck in their own zone for a fair amount of shifts.
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But for Suzuki, who has maintained a point-per-game scoring pace since the start of the season, the tag is far from a misnomer, and feeds into the narrative that he should be strongly considered for the Selke Trophy this season.
As for Slafkovsky, I have to say I was not expecting him to be among the top 20, let alone the top 5, but the numbers don’t lie.
Some of it has to do with his time spent on the first line, alongside Suzuki and Cole Caufield, however, we should guard against discarding his performance while playing on that line.
His offensive game is slowly, yet surely coming along, while his defensive prowess has improved by leaps and bounds since joining the league as an 18-year-old in 2022.
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