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Rukkr Original NHL · MTL By The Beat Guy Aug 31, 2026

Suzuki's at the Golf Course. Camp Is Around the Corner.

Nick Suzuki showed up at his golf tournament yesterday and talked to reporters, which is the most reliable sign that the offseason is nearly over. When the captain surfaces for media availability in late August, training camp is close. The summer of moves is about to become a season.

It's worth pausing on how much has changed since the final buzzer in May. Demidov is locked in for eight years. Kirby Dach is signed. Brett Berard is here from New York. Maksymilian Szuber adds depth on the blue line. Brendan Gallagher, 14 seasons in Montreal, is in Vancouver. The roster the Canadiens bring to camp looks meaningfully different from the one that averaged under three goals a game down the stretch and went home early.

The questions that remain are the ones that don't get answered until the games start. Suzuki himself carried this offense last season — 54 points in 49 games — and the additions around him are designed to take some of that weight off. Whether Dach and Berard can actually provide secondary scoring in November is a different conversation than whether they were worth signing in July. Same goes for the backup goaltending situation, which I've written about twice now and which still isn't fully resolved heading into camp.

The golf tournament is a ritual, not a news event. But it marks something real: the window for front-office answers is closing, and the window for on-ice ones is opening.

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