Hockey

“He’ll never be a leader”: when a GM misses his assessment of Nick Suzuki at the Combine
Félix Forget
“He’ll never be a leader”: when a GM misses his assessment of Nick Suzuki at the Combine
Credit: Getty Images

Over the past few days, the NHL Combine was held in Buffalo. The best prospects of the next generation underwent a battery of physical tests and met the various teams on the Bettman circuit.

They heard about casinos, naval battles and even had their comedic talents put to the test.

That said, it's important to take some and leave some with an event like this. After all, just because a player destroys everything in the physical tests doesn't necessarily mean he'll be an excellent player, just as it's possible that a player who pulls out all the stops in these tests will become an excellent player regardless.

That's interesting information, but there's a lot more to evaluating a prospect than that.

And recently, Cam Robinson(Elite Prospects) wrote an excellent paper on how physical testing was over-emphasized just a few years ago. In particular, he spoke to Steve Werier, a former assistant GM in Florida, who told him that a few years ago, a GM in the league told him about a prospect who was being tested and who, in his eyes, would never have the physical maturity to excel in the NHL or be a leader on the Bettman circuit.

And that prospect was Nick Suzuki.

Of course, as we know today, the GM in question missed out in spectacular fashion. Suzuki became captain of the Canadiens… and just had an 89-point season as the Habs' first center.

And he did it with very little help beyond his own line.

What all this shows, however, is that you really have to take a lot for granted, especially when it comes to physical testing. After all, sometimes these tests won't be representative of the athlete's true physical potential (which might simply be reached later), and often you have to go beyond athletic ability to properly evaluate a player.

This helps to give credibility to the candidacy of certain prospects, certainly (the text mentions Jayden Struble as a prospect who took advantage of the Combine to gain points), but Suzuki is capable of excelling without necessarily being an athletic monster. He excels because he's a cerebral player, and it's not by looking at the number of pull-ups he can do that we can fully understand his game.

Suzuki is certainly not the only one to have been so poorly evaluated at the Combine, but he's an interesting case study in the event's limitations.

So be careful before you see the Habs drafting the player who stands out most in the physical tests: it could be a poisoned chalice.


Overtime

– Carlos Alcaraz champion at Roland-Garros. He won one of the greatest matches in recent sporting history.

– Interesting.

– That would be very cool.

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