MILAN \u2014 When Nick Suzuki jumped over the boards with 4:34 to play in regulation with Team Canada down 3-2 to the Czech Republic, he did so with a heavy mind, a sense of responsibility for the predicament Canada found itself in: a potentially imminent elimination from the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Suzuki missed an open net in the second period with the game tied 2-2. He was also on the ice and in pursuit of Martin Ne\u010das when Ondrej Palat took a drop pass and gave the Czechs a 3-2 lead with a little less than eight minutes left in the third period.<\/p>\n
Of the two, Suzuki was more upset with himself on the goal against \u2014 one where the Czechs had six skaters on the ice for a long time, and where Palat was the sixth player to enter the defensive zone \u2014 than he was for missing the open net, saying he would have liked to better anticipate the drop pass to Palat as opposed to having his stick in the lane to prevent a pass to David Pastr\u0148\u00e1k on the weak side.<\/p>\n
All of this was on his mind when he jumped on the ice, playing between Mark Stone and Mitch Marner as a replacement for captain Sidney Crosby, with less than five minutes left in regulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that,\u201d Suzuki said, \u201cI knew I had to step up and do something.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shift was not amounting to much when, with 3:39 left \u2014 or 55 seconds into his shift \u2014 Suzuki hit the red line with the puck as Stone and Marner headed to the bench.<\/p>\n
When Suzuki was younger, when he first started working with Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, he would regularly extend shifts to try for one more offensive opportunity. It took some time and persistence from St. Louis to get Suzuki and his regular linemate Cole Caufield to stop doing that and instead just put the puck deep and get off the ice when it was time for a change.<\/p>\n
But when Suzuki hit that red line, he knew Stone and Marner were already close enough to the Canada bench to get the change in safely, and so he remembered something else St. Louis has been preaching to him in Montreal.<\/p>\n
He extended his shift, yes. But he did it in a smart, calculated way, in a way that St. Louis always preaches to his players: when you have multiple options available to you, don\u2019t simply choose a good option, choose the best option.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of something that Marty (St. Louis) always talks about. If you\u2019re by yourself, linemates are changing, maybe just try to get it in, go forecheck by yourself and buy yourself some time for fresh guys to get out there,\u201d Suzuki said, \u201cand I was able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suzuki held onto the puck, absorbed a light cross-check from Lukas Sedlak, chipped it softly into the Czech zone and prepared himself to battle defenseman Filip Hronek for that puck. The goal was simply to get a stick on the puck, to keep it alive, to give Canada\u2019s next line a chance to spend its shift in the offensive zone.<\/p>\n
Despite everything that was on Suzuki\u2019s mind, how badly he wanted to make up for a perceived mistake on what was still the potential winning goal at the time, he made a second calculated evaluation on the play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey played yesterday and we knew we\u2019ve just got to keep wearing them down and getting in hard on the forecheck,\u201d Suzuki said. \u201c(Hronek) plays a lot of minutes. I just tried to do my best to go win that battle.\u201d<\/p>\n
And because of the first calculated evaluation Suzuki made \u2014 to keep the puck to begin with \u2014 Seth Jarvis was able to enter the offensive zone with fresh legs and a fresh mind, and recovered the puck in the spot Suzuki placed it for him to collect. As that happened, Devon Toews was also coming off the bench fresh, and Suzuki curled toward the front of the net as Jarvis sent Toews the puck at the blue line.<\/p>\n
And as Suzuki made that curl, he did a subtle little thing to make the play work. He showed Toews the blade of his stick, on his forehand side, wide of the net.<\/p>\n
Essentially, he gave Toews a target, and Toews hit it perfectly.<\/p>\n
Suzuki tipped the puck between Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l\u2019s legs, the game was tied, a nervous Canadian-heavy crowd exploded, and Suzuki\u2019s goal celebration nearly saw him fall through the open gate where the skating camera operator had just gotten on the ice surface.<\/p>\n
But it all began with Suzuki \u2014 with tired legs and a tired, burdened mind \u2014 making a decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an elite play,\u201d Canada forward Brad Marchand said. \u201cI don\u2019t know where he was at in his shift but the fact he got that in by himself, created the forecheck and won a battle, allowing those guys to get in \u2014 it\u2019s not just the tip, it\u2019s the entire play. That\u2019s what sometimes guys don\u2019t get credit for. He\u2019s done that 1,000 times throughout the tournament, but some people are just counting points.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re not too concerned about it; we know the effort he puts in every day and that\u2019s why we appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marchand\u2019s answer was tainted by him being told Suzuki had been getting some criticism for how his tournament had been going. His line with Nathan MacKinnon and Brandon Hagel was somewhat inconsistent, and Suzuki himself had admitted he was having some trouble adjusting to plays along the walls in the defensive zone, something he doesn\u2019t do as a natural center but must as a winger.<\/p>\n
That criticism was loud online, but it did not reach Canada\u2019s dressing room.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, no one\u2019s really worried about outside noise, no one pays attention to that in our room,\u201d Marchand said. \u201cEvery guy is valued and has a role to do. He\u2019s been having a great tournament through our eyes, regardless of what the outside says. We\u2019re in this position because of the whole team. It was great to see him get that. He\u2019s a big-time player, he\u2019s showed that his whole career, and he showed that again tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Best-on-best hockey is about details, and that emphasis on details is only heightened at the Olympics. Suzuki felt he had not paid enough attention to the details on the Czech go-ahead goal, and that he needed to do something about it.<\/p>\n
More than the goal, more than the tip, what Suzuki did about it was make a decision.<\/p>\n
The right decision.<\/p>\n
The best decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike I told you, he\u2019s a Swiss army knife, he can play with anybody, and I thought he elevated his game,\u201d Canada coach Jon Cooper said. \u201cAnd when our country needed a goal, Nick Suzuki answered, and good for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 When Nick Suzuki jumped over the boards with 4:34 to play in regulation with Team Canada…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,54125,264,21,5147,4,2602],"class_list":{"0":"post-462676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","11":"tag-montreal","12":"tag-montreal-canadiens","13":"tag-montrealcanadiens","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-olympics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116094339576847611","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}