Hickey: Canadiens' Nick Suzuki makes strong case for Team Canada berth
Thanksgiving Day in the United States is devoted to family, food and football, but the annual exercise in excess also has significance for National Hockey League teams.
The holiday serves as a bellwether and there is a strong probability that teams occupying a playoff position on Thanksgiving Day will be in the same position when the regular season ends.
It’s not a guarantee, but it has proved 77 per cent accurate in the salary-cap era (excluding the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Last season, 12 of the 16 teams that held playoff spots on Thanksgiving advanced to post-season play.
The Canadiens were not in a playoff position when the sun rose on Thursday. For a brief moment, they were third in the Atlantic Division after
beating the Utah Mammoth 4-3 in Salt Lake City
Wednesday but, an hour later, the Ottawa Senators beat the Vegas Golden Knights in a shootout, dropping the Canadiens into ninth place in the Eastern Conference.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that the Canadiens are in a better position than they were at this time last year, when they were last in the Eastern Conference.
The Canadiens were five points out of a playoff position and 12th in the Eastern Conference standings when play resumed in late February after the 4 Nations Face-Off action, but they finished with a 15-5-6 run to grab the final wild-card spot with a two-point edge over Columbus.
This time, Montreal is tied in points with Pittsburgh in the fight for the second wild-card spot in the East, although the Penguins have the edge in the tiebreaker with four more regulation wins. And the Canadiens have a better winning percentage than four of the teams ahead of them — Ottawa, Boston, Washington and the New York Islanders.
The Canadiens are again looking like a playoff team after a dismal eight-game stretch when they won only one game and lost five in a row while being outscored 38-23. The win in Utah followed an impressive 5-2 home win over archrival Toronto.
Here are five takeaways as the Canadiens face a busy schedule with 17 games over the final 34 days of 2025:
Nick Suzuki
continues to show
why he has to be on Canada’s Olympic team and should be a finalist for the Selke Trophy as the top defensive forward. He’s on pace for a 97-point season after collecting two goals and an assist in Utah but, just as impressive, he blocked four shots.
Jakub Dobes
is the No. 1 goaltender
until further notice. He came up with the
key saves on a night when Montreal was outshot 34-17
and improved his record to 8-2-2 with a 5-0-2 record on the road. Samuel Montembeault needs to play to regain his confidence but, for the time being, that means sharing the work in back-to-back situations.
Zachary Bolduc received a shot of confidence
with a three-point night in Utah. Bolduc scored goals in each of his first three games as a Canadien, but then hit a dry spell with only three points in his next 18 games. Head coach Martin St. Louis attempted to jump-start Bolduc by moving him to the top line with Suzuki and Cole Caufield. It has only been four games, but they seem to be developing chemistry.
The Canadiens have to shoot more
because, when they shoot, they score. Montreal ranks third in goals per game (3.45) despite ranking 29th in shots per game (25.1). Rookie scoring leader Ivan Demidov ran his points streak to four games with a goal in Utah, but that was the only shot on goal from the line of
Demidov, Oliver Kapanen and Juraj Slafkovsky
. Kapanen is starting to look like the sought-after No. 2 centre. He needs to work on his defence, but he’s tied for fourth in rookie scoring and is tied for the rookie goal lead with seven.
The Canadiens should get a boost
when Kaiden Guhle and Kirby Dach return from injuries early in the new year. In the meantime, they have to remain in contention and that probably means earning at least 20 points in the 17 games remaining in 2025. December has traditionally been a difficult month for the Canadiens and there’s
good news and bad news in the schedule.
The good news is the Canadiens play eight of their first 11 games at home before embarking on a seven-game road swing from Dec. 21 to Jan. 4. The bad news is there are four back-to-back scenarios in December.
