Phillip Danault shares his thoughts on Nick Suzuki being named captain.

The Montreal Canadiens made a major announcement this week when they unveiled that young forward Nick Suzuki would be crowned the next captain of the franchise. In spite of the fact that Suzuki is only 23 years old, an age that some feel is a bit young for such a large responsibility, the Canadiens believe that the London, Ontario native was the right man to lead their locker room for the foreseeable future.

The move has largely been praised and many had already suspected that this was something that seemed destined to happen at some point, and recently a former member of the Montreal Canadiens chimed in with his own 2 cents on the topic. That former player is none other than Los Angeles Kings forward Phillip Danault, who was held in high regard during his 6 seasons with the Canadiens by both staff and fans alike, who recently had this to say about the major announcement:

"Very proud of him," said Danault. "He deserves it. He's very serious at what he does, and I don't think it could be a better fit than Nick, to be honest. When I was there, I kind of took him under my wings when he was a rookie. You could tell he already had an edge to be a big leader. I like the move from Montreal, and I respect that. He's gonna do an awesome job."

As I mentioned, Danault is already held in high regard by many fans of the Canadiens and no doubt the classy comments he makes here about his former team and his former teammate will only further ingratiate him to that fan base. It's interesting to hear Danault make mention of the fact that he feels he played a mentoring role in the development of a young Nick Suzuki, as you would be hard pressed to ask for a better role model.

Not only did Danault earn praise for his work as a difficult to play against, shut-down, centerman during his time with the Canadiens, but since moving to Los Angeles he has shown he has the offensive touch as well with 27 goals and 24 assists for a total of 51 points over 79 regular season games in what was his first season with Kings.