Photo credit: David Kirouac – USA Today
The debate over Nick Suzuki’s faceoffs has flared up again after yesterday’s Montreal Canadiens loss.
It all started with a message posted on social media, where an observer wrote that Suzuki “couldn’t win a faceoff to save his life.” The expression is dramatic, but it spread rapidly and reignited the finger-pointing after the game. Quickly, some even suggested that Juraj Slafkovsky had been doing better than him in the circle over the last few games.
However, the big Slovak has taken barely a handful of faceoffs this season, with a success rate of around 25 percent on only 16 attempts – a minuscule sample on which it’s impossible to draw serious conclusions.
Nick Suzuki at the center of the storm
What truly fuels the discussion are the expectations placed on the Canadiens’ number-one center.
“Suzuki cant win a faceoff to save his life. I mean Slaf has been winning more as of late.” – Hockey Leaks
The numbers, however, tell a more nuanced story. Last year, Suzuki won 52.6 percent of his faceoffs, after a season at 51.6 percent, while taking more than 1,300 draws in 2023-24 – the highest total on the team. This year, despite a few rough nights that everyone remembers, he is still hovering around 52 percent efficiency in the circle.
And while every lost draw is dissected – especially those in overtime against teams like Toronto – he continues to produce at more than a point-per-game pace, with 31 points in 26 games so far.
It’s easy to forget that at 26, Suzuki is coming off a 30-goal, 89-point season – the first Canadiens player to average a point per game since Alex Kovalev. You also have to remember the context: the captain has been playing injured for several weeks, something the Canadiens acknowledged publicly, yet he has never missed a single game in his career.
Anything involving Suzuki is amplified automatically, and every bad night in the faceoff circle becomes a large-scale public trial.
In the end, this debate about faceoffs really says just one thing: in Montreal, when you’re the face of the team, even a puck dropped at center ice can set social media on fire.
Previously on All Montreal Hockey
POLL
1 HOUR AGOÂ Â Â |Â Â Â 58 ANSWERS
Nick Suzuki comes under fire in Montreal for one specific part of his game
Should Nick Suzuki still be taking all the big faceoffs?