Photo by All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
Edmonton Oilers Center #93
A first-overall pick who became something more useful than a star: the player who makes whichever line he is put on work.
| Season | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-26 | 72 | 20 | 36 | 56 | -9 | 21 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 133 | 15.0 | 19:04 |
| Career | 1031 | 291 | 513 | 804 | -28 | 355 | 88 | 9 | 38 | 2388 | 12.2 | 19:23 |
Last Season
Twenty goals and 56 points in 72 games, eleven of the goals on the power play, and a minus-nine that says more about where he was deployed than about how he played. He passed a thousand career games along the way.
The Finesse Game
The hands are quiet and very good. His best work comes from the half-wall on the power play, where he holds the puck just long enough to move a penalty killer and then puts it through the lane that killer has vacated. The pass across to the far circle is his signature, and he throws it flat and hard enough to be one-timed.
At even strength he is a connector. He is the player who takes a bad pass in his feet, settles it, and turns a broken zone entry into a possession. None of that shows up anywhere except in the fact that lines with him on them keep the puck.
He plays center or the left side without a drop-off, which is why he has spent a decade being moved around to fix whatever is broken that month. He kills penalties, takes defensive-zone draws, and has made himself genuinely trustworthy in his own end — none of which anyone projected when he went first overall.
The Physical Game
Slight, and always has been. Listed at 192 and does not play heavier than that. He is not going to win a wall battle against a real defenseman, so he does not try one — he wins pucks with his stick, his angles and his timing, and he is harder to knock off balance than the frame suggests.
He blocks shots and takes hits to make plays. He does not hit.
The Intangibles
Fifteen years in one place, most of them on teams that were bad before they were good, and he has taken every role the club has needed without a word about it: first-line center, third-line center, McDavid’s winger, penalty killer. That kind of flexibility usually gets called selfless and undervalued. Both are true here.
He is no longer quick enough to drive his own line against top competition. He is still a better hockey player at thirty-three than he was at twenty-three, which is not something you get to say about many first-overall picks.