At 32 years old, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is inching into greybeard territory as an NHLer.
With 14 seasons and approaching 1,000 games of service, he’s been with the Edmonton Oilers longer than any current player. But you won’t find any actual grey in his beard – in fact, he wasn’t even rocking one in the playoffs.
While teammates such as Mattias Ekholm (a.k.a. ‘The Viking Warrior’) and Connor McDavid had full, bushy bristles, Nugent-Hopkins was sporting a Van Dyke in the Stanley Cup final. And frankly, that may be all he can grow.
Nugent-Hopkins still has that youthful glow about him, and while he no longer looks like the teen Edmonton drafted first overall back in 2011, he also doesn’t bear any physical effects of the down years that accompanied his early seasons with the Oilers.
Now that he has been part of two consecutive trips to the final, he can look back on that time with perspective.
“Those were fun years for me as a young kid coming into the league,” he said. “But it could be frustrating at times when the team isn’t having success. You learn a lot about how hard it is to win in this league and how important the little things are. It’s been a ton of fun to see our team evolve and put together some runs – two years in a row now.”
When ‘Nuge’ came into the league in 2011, the Oilers were far from the team they are now. They hadn’t made the playoffs since losing the final to the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006, and they were in the midst of a span that saw seven coaches behind the bench in eight years. Nugent-Hopkins was also famously the second of three consecutive first-overall picks, following Taylor Hall and preceding Nail Yakupov. The rest of the hockey world crowed about Edmonton’s lottery luck, but it didn’t really matter: the Oilers still weren’t winning.
The most positive development for Nugent-Hopkins during those early years was the NHL lockout in 2012. Although he’d finished third in team scoring as a rookie the season prior, the lockout forced Edmonton to send Nugent-Hopkins, Hall and Jordan Eberle to the AHL, where they ended up getting bonus development time with Oklahoma City.
“It was a really cool experience for me,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “I had the one year of experience in the NHL before OKC, and we were just a bunch of kids again. It was obviously a higher level, and everything is ramped up compared to junior, but you’re kind of a kid again. You’re hanging out with the guys every day, and I got to play at the world juniors, so I do think it was more development than I might have got if I was still in the NHL that year.”
At the time, it was a temporary respite from being on a struggling team, but those playing against him in those early years saw Nugent-Hopkins’ emerging talent.
“You could see he was smart,” said former teammate Corey Perry, who saw a lot of Edmonton when he was a star with the Anaheim Ducks. “His IQ was off the charts, and he works. He’s hard on his stick, he battles, and if you watched our games, he wins a lot of 1-on-1 battles – more than he loses, I’ll tell you that. And you could see that early on.”
Although Nugent-Hopkins, Hall and Eberle quickly became the offensive drivers in Edmonton, the culture just wasn’t there in the room. Captain Andrew Ference was basically on his own, with few other credible veterans to back him up, while the team had three coaches in 2014-15 alone, with then-GM Craig MacTavish being one of those on an interim basis between Dallas Eakins and Todd Nelson. In fact, it took another first-overall selection to truly turn things around in Edmonton.
On April 18, 2015, the NHL held its draft lottery with updated rules that decreased the odds for the league’s four worst teams. But the Oilers, who finished third-last overall, won anyway, giving the organization its fourth No. 1 selection in six years.
The prize, of course, was the right to draft McDavid. Needless to say, Nugent-Hopkins was enthused, and he wasn’t about to wait for the Oilers to make it official two months later.
“He was one of the first people to ever reach out to me in the organization,” McDavid said. “It was only a couple days after the draft lottery that he sent me a text. I thought he was pulling my leg or something. I didn’t believe it at first. It definitely meant a lot.”
Nugent-Hopkins, 22 at the time with four NHL seasons under his belt, joked that he was “pretty confident” the Oilers would be selecting McDavid when the draft itself eventually came around, but you couldn’t blame him for getting caught up in the anticipation.
“Yeah, it was pretty wild,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “Like everybody in Edmonton, we were pretty excited to say the least. We didn’t expect it, so I might have jumped the gun early on the text, but we were pretty confident. Definitely a cool moment for the city and the team.”
An injury cut short McDavid’s impact as a rookie, limiting him to 45 games, but he still managed 48 points, good for third on the team. No longer called upon to drive the offense with Hall and Eberle, Nugent-Hopkins had begun transitioning into more of a supporting role to the Oilers’ new superstar.
One year later, as McDavid hit 100 points, Nugent-Hopkins and the Oilers were back in the playoffs, where they beat San Jose in the first round before falling to a veteran Ducks team. Hall was already gone, traded to New Jersey in the summer for defenseman Adam Larsson (“the trade is one for one”), as was Yakupov, who never really found his footing in the NHL and headed back to Russia after six seasons (four in Edmonton).
But the emerging core in Edmonton was even more exciting now: McDavid and Nugent-Hopkins were joined by defenseman Darnell Nurse and a big center from Germany named Leon Draisaitl. Most importantly, however, the culture was changing.
“When you get a guy like Connor that doesn’t come around often – or ever – you have to build a winning team around him,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “He’s going to do a lot of that by himself, and he’s been a huge part of driving this culture into a winning one. You bring in guys around him who have experience, and it naturally progresses. You have to get in and have some runs, experience some hard losses to really understand different things and grow your game as a team and as individuals, and that’s something we’ve done the past 10 years.”
As for Draisaitl, like Nugent-Hopkins in 2011, he may not have come into the league with as much hype as McDavid, but then again, who has?
Coming out of his wild 2014 draft class, which also featured Aaron Ekblad, Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett (the four have now played each other twice in a row in the Cup final), Draisaitl was a major talent in the CHL as well, becoming a leader in Prince Albert before finishing off his WHL career in Kelowna, where he helped the Rockets win a league championship.
While McDavid kills with speed, Draisaitl does it with power, and whenever the Oilers load up or get on the power play, you can bet McDavid will find Draisaitl in his office at the right side of the net, ready to pound in a one-timer.
Late in the Dallas series, with Edmonton in need of a push, TV cameras caught the pair oh-so-subtly glance at each other on the bench, as if to say “time to take this thing over.” Spoiler alert, they did.
“We’ve definitely developed a sense and understanding of what the other one is thinking at any given moment,” McDavid said. “Leo and I have a great understanding of each other, and sometimes, all it takes is a look.”
Not only have the pair given the Oilers two of the world’s most dangerous offensive weapons, but they’ve also helped build that culture that was sorely missing in Nugent-Hopkins’ first four seasons. Their mental toughness has been key to team success.
“It’s almost just as important and speaks to their level of competitiveness and their drive to win,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “It’s something, as players, we look to and follow. It’s so impressive on a day-to-day basis that it pushes you, too. They’re two of the most talented players we’ve probably ever seen in the game. But it has to be more than that, and those two guys have that. They want to win so bad, it’s easy to follow them.”
And Nugent-Hopkins did follow them to an entirely different level. In 2022-23, he exploded for 37 goals and 104 points, more than doubling his production from the season prior. A big reason was his inclusion on a devastating power play that clicked at 32.4 percent – better than the 1977-78 Montreal Canadiens, any of the dynasty New York Islanders teams and even the Gretzky-era Oilers. Nugent-Hopkins finished the campaign with 53 power-play points, third in the league to McDavid and Draisaitl.
Ekholm started that year with the Nashville Predators, so he knew firsthand what ‘RNH’ brought to the table before a trade made them teammates in Edmonton.
“Yeah, it’s frustrating to play against him because he always seems to be on the right side of things,” Ekholm said. “He’s a gifted scorer and a gifted passer, but the thing that stands out for me is his two-way game. He’s never out of a situation. Always in the right spot. Always helping his D-man. He’s that Swiss Army Knife; you can insert him anywhere.”
On top of that, Nugent-Hopkins found his own leadership style along the way, and now, he’s also a big part of Edmonton’s culture.
“He’s a very calm guy and one of those guys who, when he speaks up, you listen,” Ekholm said. “Those are key guys on a team, and we’re super happy to have Ryan.”
That 104-point campaign has been the high-water mark for Nugent-Hopkins. But even with less production the past two seasons, his value as an all-around player has translated into playoff success for the Oilers.
Although Edmonton again fell in the final to Florida, Nugent-Hopkins was a big reason why the Oilers plowed through the Western Conference bracket. Playing both center and wing during the run, he finished the post-season with 20 points in 22 games – but he wasn’t even healthy for the most important series. As McDavid noted in the aftermath of the final, Nugent-Hopkins played that series against the Panthers with a broken hand, which explains why he was often mentioned as a game-time decision during the final.
As painful as it must be to lose two championships in a row – and to the same opponent, no less – it’s a good time to be a member of the Edmonton Oilers. With all the talent the franchise has assembled, the team is still one to watch in the West this year, and Nugent-Hopkins will again be a key cog.
For those who have followed the Oilers since the beginning of his NHL career, Nugent-Hopkins is a gem. One of those fans, it turns out, is goalie Stuart Skinner, who grew up in Edmonton and used to go to games and chant “Nuuuuge!” like everyone else.
“He does bring it up, and it does age me a bit,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “He is an Edmonton kid, so it’s cool to play with him now.”
Sometime next season, Nugent-Hopkins will pass 1,000 NHL games, and every single one will have come in an Oilers jersey. It’s not something he takes for granted.
“It’s been a huge honor to do it with one team,” he said. “This is such an historic team, and this fan base has been so incredible for so long. Even in the early years when things weren’t going well, you still felt the support and the passion every day. I was lucky to get through some of those years when it seemed like everyone was getting traded and the team wanted to go different directions here and there. They always stuck by me. I’m grateful for that.”
And the fine citizens of Edmonton are grateful to have ‘Nuuuuuge’ around still.
Note: This article was republished online with the correct author byline.
This article appeared in our 2025 Yearbook and Fantasy Guide. This issue features team reports for all 32 NHL teams heading into the 2025-26 season, including an analysis of their offense, defense and goaltending, as well as our prediction for where we think they will finish in the league standings. We also include features on Oilers center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson and more. In addition, we take a look at the top skaters and goaltenders ahead of the coming season.
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