Worlds: Edmonton journalist sees Nick Suzuki’s refusal as a “mistake

This Friday sees the start of the World Hockey Championships in the Czech Republic. Kaiden Guhle will be defending Canada’s colors, as will Cole Caufield for the United States and, eventually, Juraj Slafkovský for Slovakia.

For Austria, Habs hopeful Vinzenz Rohrer will be there, while David Reinbacher will not. In Reinbacher’s case, it’s been up in the air for a few days.

That said, Nick Suzuki’s case has been the talk of the town in recent weeks. Michel Bergeron didn’t like to see him turn down the invitation, especially with the big international competitions coming up.

But in reality, we suspected he had a good reason… and in the end, we’re inclined to think that his recent engagement had something to do with it.

On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to satisfy Edmonton journalist Jim Matheson(who made headlines a few years ago when he got into a verbal altercation with Leon Draisaitl), who describes the Habs captain’s decision as a “mistake”.

But he didn’t stop there: when someone brought up that Suzuki probably wanted to take some time off, Matheson didn’t seem to be particularly happy with the answer:

Rest for what? He’s a hockey player. – Jim Matheson

Matheson then ended his tirade on the subject by saying that if the Habs were in the playoffs, Suzuki would play and he’d be happy to do so, but now he’s treating the whole thing differently… and Matheson believes it’s going to cost him points with the Canadian team’s management.

He’s not the first to raise this last point, by the way.

In an ideal world, of course, it would have been preferable to see Suzuki take part in the tournament. That said, we’re talking about a player who has never missed a game since the start of his career, and who plays an enormous amount of minutes every game for the Habs.

He’s got a huge regular-season workload, and you’d think a bit of rest would do him good, especially as he’s taken the opportunity to get engaged.

Could this eventually cost him a place on the Canadian team in a major international competition? Possibly, but if Suzuki takes advantage of his off-season to come back at 100% next year and dominates again for 82 games, he’ll have let his game do the talking in a different way.

And at least Nick Suzuki isn’t a Swiss player, so he’s not automatically banned from future international competitions simply because he missed one like Lian Bischel. If that had been the case, it might have been called a “mistake”, but in Suzuki’s case, it seems harsh.

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In gusts

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