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Nick Suzuki has yet to make a 5-on-5 pass this season

As captain, number one center, team leader and highest paid player, Nick Suzuki has to produce.

And in recent seasons, he’s done just that. He has been his team’s leading scorer for the last two campaigns.

So far, he’s among the club’s top scorers, but he’s not in first place. Cole Caufield (11 points) and Sean Monahan (10 points) are just ahead of the captain (nine points).

(Credit: NHL.com )

Having nine points in 11 games is far from bad. In fact, he’s on track to amass around 67 points, which would be his best career season in the Bettman circuit.

What’s worrying is his five-on-five offensive production. Suzuki has no assists and only three goals in such situations. Yet 14 is an excellent playmaker and the majority of his points should be assists.

Three points at 5-on-5, four points at 5-on-4 and two points at 3-on-3: Suzuki still produces in all situations, but there’s room for improvement, especially at even strength.

It’s easy to pick on the captain; he’s the best player on this team and if he does some things wrong, people will notice. But as noted on the stats site, moneypuck, he’s not the only forward on the team struggling on even strength.

Guys like Jake Evans, Michael Pezzetta and Rafaël Harvey-Pinard are experiencing misses, but we don’t necessarily expect great production from them. I’d rather focus on guys like Cole Caufield and Josh Anderson, who are paid to make points.

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In Caufield’s case, four of his 11 points (only) have been amassed at 5-on-5. And he has just one goal. For a natural scorer, that’s not ideal.

And for Josh Anderson, he only has one point at even strength. In fact, he has one point at all… He’s the team’s worst striker in this respect. And let’s not forget that he’s the team’s fourth-highest paid forward.

Anderson is dragging his teammates down, as shown in the RDS chart below.

In short, it’s been a tough 5-on-5 start to the season for some of Montreal’s forwards.

Let’s hope they recover from this bad sequence, because you can’t always play 3-on-3 or 5-on-4…

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