Nick Suzuki Out 2 to 4 Weeks, Ironman Streak Ends at 546 Games

Montreal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki will miss two to four weeks with an upper-body injury, the club announced Thursday. The absence ends the longest run of availability on the roster: Suzuki has played every game of his NHL career, 546 in a row since his 2019-20 debut. He will miss a game for the first time on Friday in Chicago.

What did the Canadiens announce?

The club announced Thursday morning that Suzuki will be out two to four weeks because of an upper-body injury. NHL.com’s report of the announcement gives the timeline and the injury designation, and TSN’s report carries the same timeline. The announcement came two days after Suzuki played 21:03 against San Jose, scored a goal, added an assist, and finished the game.

Montreal also recalled forward Owen Beck from the Laval Rocket on Thursday, one day after sending him down. Beck scored in Laval’s 5-1 win over Syracuse on Wednesday. He has played two NHL games this season without a point, and TSN reports the recall came just before the Suzuki announcement.

How did Suzuki get hurt?

TSN reports he blocked a shot with his hand late in Tuesday’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Sharks. He stayed in the game after the block. He did not speak to reporters afterward because he was receiving treatment, which TSN noted at the time. The club has called the injury an upper-body injury and nothing more specific, so the hand detail rests on TSN’s reporting rather than on a team diagnosis. No surgery has been announced, and no outlet in the reviewed coverage reported one.

What does a 546-game streak actually contain?

The streak covers every game since his NHL debut in the 2019-20 season: a 71-game debut season, the shortened 56-game season that followed, five straight 82-game seasons, and the first nine games of this one. The NHL ranks 546 as the second-longest active streak in the league, behind Brent Burns at 1,017, and the 20th longest in league history.

Streaks like this one usually end the way this one did. A shot in an October game, a hand in the lane, and a player who has answered every call for seven seasons watches from the press box. Montreal’s own week shows how fast the list grows: the Kindel episode in Pittsburgh and Ottawa’s mix of one absence and two returns are running on the same news cycle, and Bedard’s return as captain in Chicago was the other side of the same coin, a team getting its center back.

What does Montreal lose besides 12 points?

Montreal loses its top scorer and its best defensive forward in the same absence. Suzuki leads the Canadiens with 12 points in nine games, five goals and seven assists. He also won the Selke Trophy last season as the league’s top defensive forward, in the same season he set his career high with 101 points. The club is replacing the one center who was doing both jobs on the top line.

The depth chart behind him is the harder part. theScore lists Alex Newhook, Phillip Danault and Jake Evans as the centers behind Suzuki. Danault can take the defensive assignments. Nobody on that list takes the top power-play spot and the first-line matchups at the same time, which is why the replacement will run by committee for as long as Suzuki is out. For comparison, Kucherov tying the Lightning points record shows what a single hard-to-replace scorer does to a team’s planning. Montreal’s version of that problem starts Friday.

When could Suzuki come back?

The club’s range is two to four weeks from Thursday, so the short end puts his return in early November and the long end toward the middle of the month. He will miss the whole road trip either way: Chicago on Friday, the Heritage Classic in Winnipeg on Sunday, then St. Louis and Dallas, per the trip sequence reported by Habs Eyes on the Prize. Montreal comes into the trip at 4-3-2 with 10 points, sixth in the Atlantic Division, per TSN. A team in that spot can survive a week of committee center play. Four weeks of it is a different test, and the Hellebuyck holdout in Winnipeg is a reminder that the Jets team waiting on Sunday has its own unresolved star problem.

The next firm information will come from the club: a timeline update, a sighting at practice, or a roster move that signals the longer end of the range. This page will update when Montreal speaks again.