{"id":800502,"date":"2026-08-03T04:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T04:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800502\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T04:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T04:28:08","slug":"park-hopes-to-complete-journey-from-viral-sensation-to-oilers-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800502\/","title":{"rendered":"Park hopes to complete journey from viral sensation to Oilers forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Getting to the NHL, however, is no laughing matter for the 20-year-old, going into his second season at the University of Michigan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Park is trying to follow in the footsteps of his uncle <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/richard-park-8460541\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Park<\/a>, a forward who played 14 NHL seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Philadelphia Flyers, Minnesota Wild, Vancouver Canucks and New York Islanders from 1994-2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re both really busy, but it\u2019s great whenever I get to talk to him,&#8221; Aidan Park said. &#8220;He played a long time in the NHL and he\u2019s very knowledgeable. He\u2019s a great person to talk to if I ever need to and I\u2019m really lucky to have a great support system around me. Whenever I need to give him a ring, he\u2019ll answer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Richard Park was a pioneer as the second Korean-born player in the NHL behind <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/jim-paek-8450089\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Paek<\/a>, who debuted with the Penguins in 1990-91. Richard, now a pro scout with the Wild, said he was delighted to see his nephew chosen in the draft.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had it on the TV and my wife and daughter were kind of just doing things around the house and it was getting towards the end, so we weren\u2019t watching it or anything,\u201d Richard Park said. \u201cIt\u2019s my daughter who heard it first and she said, \u2018Aidan just got drafted,\u2019 and it was amazing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know that from a media perspective you like the whole hoodie and that storyline and that was a neat perspective, but for us as his relatives it was just a really happy moment of happiness and relief for Aidan. We\u2019ve seen how much time and commitment he\u2019s put into the sport, so we were just very happy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aidan Park was selected following his final season with Green Bay of the United States Hockey League, where he had 66 points (33 goals, 33 assists) in 55 games.<\/p>\n<p>Last season, he had 16 points (eight goals, eight assists) as a freshman at Michigan. He attended his second development camp with the Oilers in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting to the NHL, however, is no laughing matter for the 20-year-old, going into his second season at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-800502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}