{"id":955928,"date":"2026-11-02T21:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T21:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/955928\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T21:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T21:04:11","slug":"plug-and-play-nugent-hopkins-closing-in-on-monster-milestone-for-oilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/955928\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Plug-and-play’ Nugent-Hopkins closing in on monster milestone for Oilers"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins<\/a> has become, like green onion cakes at The Fringe, Edmonton\u2019s comfort food.<\/p>\n

For us, he\u2019s a sunny, minus-5C skate at Hawrelak Park, something Edmontonians don\u2019t care if you love as much as we do. He\u2019s No. 9 at Riverside \u2014\u00a0not exactly Augusta, but a darned good hole we\u2019ll play every summer, as long as we\u2019re still swinging a club.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still a little surreal,\u201d he said of Tuesday’s pending milestone, passing Kevin Lowe for most games played as an Oiler. \u201cIt does take me back to getting drafted by Edmonton as a little 18-year-old kid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dream is to play your whole career with the team that drafted you, and have success. I’ve been very fortunate to have been able to stick around through some hard years, where pretty much everybody that I came into the league with, you’re seeing them get traded. There were some hard years, some down years \u2014\u00a0team-wise and even personally \u2014 and to be able to have the faith from the organization to keep me around, and be able to stick around \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been very fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

So have we, Nuge. So have we.<\/p>\n

Even if you won\u2019t take our quiz to name all 11 head coaches you\u2019ve had in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure I could do it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I wouldn\u2019t want to leave anyone out.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s just as diplomatic when asked about his favourite uniform over the 16 seasons, waffling over the soft spot he has for that first orange jersey, to acknowledging the various darker blue versions, before finally settling on \u201cthe light blue, classic Oilers look. You can’t go wrong there.\u201d<\/p>\n

And doesn\u2019t that just sum up the career of the man who will set this record on election night in New Jersey on Tuesday, scheduled to play career game No. 1,038 game for the only team he ever loved.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not an Art Ross guy, a Rocket Richard sniper or a Hart Trophy winner. But when it comes to Nugent-Hopkins, well, you can\u2019t go wrong there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, he’s a good player for starters, and he’s probably even a better person,\u201d Lowe said Monday. \u201cWith all the coaches he’s had, I\u2019m sure all of them have come into the organization thinking, \u2018Well, there’s one guy we don’t have to worry about.\u2019 I mean, he’s a plug-and-play player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somehow, over the years, Nugent-Hopkins has become the opposite of a specialist.<\/p>\n

He is an ultra-low-maintenance player who can be an effective left winger for Connor McDavid<\/a>, kill a penalty next to Matt Hendricks or Derek Ryan, centre your second line or quietly facilitate on the NHL\u2019s best power play over the past six seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can play with the top guys, he can play down the line \u2014\u00a0his game really doesn’t change all that much,\u201d said Lowe. \u201cHe\u2019s a Swiss Army knife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who watches the Oilers knows Nugent-Hopkins as the master of the third assist on the power play. He takes McDavid\u2019s pass off the entry, chips that backhand pass back up the wall to Evan Bouchard, then often doesn\u2019t get another touch before McDavid or Leon Draisaitl<\/a> puts it in the net.<\/p>\n

There might have been a time when he worried about those lost points. But not anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d he said. \u201cI definitely feel like I want to be that guy to help us get set up and create open looks. With those three, you just kind of let them do their thing and be ready for it when it does come your way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in that 2011 draft, Nugent-Hopkins came Edmonton\u2019s way in a two-man heat for first overall between him and Gabriel Landeskog.<\/p>\n

Would you trade the Burnaby, B.C., kid who Oilers general manager Steve Tambellini picked that day for Landeskog? How about for No. 3 Jonathan Huberdeau? Or No. 4 Adam Larsson?<\/p>\n

\"3232 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n

Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.<\/p>\n

Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\n

Sure, Nugent-Hopkins isn\u2019t Nikita Kucherov, who almost everybody passed on twice before Tampa scooped him up with the 58th pick. And we can haggle over No. 7 pick Mark Scheifele, who has 108 more points in 61 fewer games than Nugent-Hopkins, but has only half his playoff games.<\/p>\n

There were 211 players chosen in that draft, and none have played more than Nugent-Hopkins\u2019 1,037 games. He\u2019s found his way, even if it\u2019s not the path he might have seen coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost kids start out as skilled players,\u201d the 33-year-old said. \u201cWhen you’re young, there’s not a whole lot of thought defensively. It’s all about go, go, go, (but) once you get into the league, you start to understand very quickly that that’s not the way that you’re going to survive in this league. You just simply can’t play like that unless you’re a top-three or top-five player in the league.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took a long time to find a game that was going to be effective,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s a finicky thing trying to find both sides both sides of your game. It’s not that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, with two kids \u2014\u00a0three-year-old daughter Lennon and eight-month-old son Graham \u2014\u00a0he and wife Breanne are dug in at Edmonton, raising a family out in the West End.<\/p>\n

What used to be an off day at the Cactus Club with Hall and Ebs \u2014 Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle \u2014\u00a0is now a baby carriage and a swing set at the park.<\/p>\n

Oh, how our young man has grown up<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are our days off now,\u201d he said with a smile. \u201cVery different, but it’s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has become, like green onion cakes at The Fringe, Edmonton\u2019s comfort food. For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":955929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-955928","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\/955928","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=955928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}