{"id":414778,"date":"2026-01-17T06:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T06:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/414778\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T06:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T06:42:09","slug":"nugent-hopkins-very-proud-to-become-1st-to-play-1000-games-all-with-oilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/414778\/","title":{"rendered":"Nugent-Hopkins \u2018very proud\u2019 to become 1st to play 1,000 games all with Oilers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nugent-Hopkins is the longest-serving player on the Oilers\u2019 current roster. Only defenseman Kevin Lowe<\/a> (1,037), in two separate tenures, has played more games with Edmonton.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been an impressive run for Nugent-Hopkins considering all the turnover during his time in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

His first coach was Tom Renney, who was replaced by Ralph Krueger. Dallas Eakins was next, followed by Todd Nelson, Todd McLellan, Ken Hitchcock, Dave Tippett, Jay Woodcroft and now Kris Knoblauch.<\/p>\n

Steve Tambellini was Nugent-Hopkins\u2019 first general manager. Then came Craig MacTavish, Peter Chiarelli, Keith Gretzky (interim), Ken Holland, Jeff Jackson (interim) and Stan Bowman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely think each coach has taught me a little something different, because every single coach, whether they have the same system or not, they coach differently,\u201d Nugent-Hopkins said. \u201cI mean there\u2019s been a few and I like to think that I\u2019ve taken something from each one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nugent-Hopkins is in the fifth season of an eight-year, $41 million contract ($5.125 million average annual value) he signed on June 29, 2021, and despite seeing a number of friends and teammates move on, he never considered leaving Edmonton on his own accord.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time (signing new contract) there was not a question this is where I wanted to be,\u201d Nugent-Hopkins said. \u201cI wanted to do whatever structure, whatever to make it work here, and there was not a serious thought that I had about leaving.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of it was that I went through a lot of dark days, struggled, and then the team was coming and we were building something. We were getting to a point where we were going to have a chance to win and I didn\u2019t want to leave that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Referred to by Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl<\/a> as \u201cthe coach\u2019s favorite\u201d during the 2024 Western Conference Final against the Dallas Stars, Nugent-Hopkins has always been receptive to coaching, dating back to his days with Red Deer of the Western Hockey League.<\/p>\n

He had 106 points (31 goals, 75 assists) in 69 games as a 17-year-old playing for coach Jesse Wallin, who is now chief amateur scout for the Detroit Red Wings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no maintenance, he\u2019s just always willing to learn, he\u2019s willing to listen,\u201d Wallin said. \u201cHe\u2019s driven to get better, and he just comes to work. He loves to play, and he shows up every day ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallin is not surprised Nugent-Hopkins will reach 1,000 games in the NHL after two full seasons in Red Deer. What is surprising, however, is that no other player has reached the milestone with just the Oilers.<\/p>\n

Earlier this season, forward Adam Henrique<\/a> became the first player to reach 1,000 NHL games as a member of the Oilers, but the bulk of his career was spent with the New Jersey Devils (455 games) and Anaheim Ducks (435).<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up as an Oilers fan in the \u201880s, and you think of the players — Wayne Gretzky<\/a>, Mark Messier<\/a>, Jari Kurri<\/a>, Kevin Lowe — and you watched those teams and now to see him come through and play all those games, it\u2019s mind-boggling to me, it\u2019s out of this world,\u201d Wallin said. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve got a guy like that, that a franchise wants to have around for that length of time and sees his value to your organization, I just really think it speaks not only to the quality of player he is, but the quality of person he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

NHL.com columnist Nicholas J. Cotsonika contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nugent-Hopkins is the longest-serving player on the Oilers\u2019 current roster. Only defenseman Kevin Lowe (1,037), in two separate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-414778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}