This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
Edmonton Oilers Center
A hundred and four points in his twelfth season, off the 5th-percentile shot.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | EDM | 62 | 18 | 34 | 52 | -2 | 16 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 134 | 13.4 | 17:36 |
| 2012-13 | EDM | 40 | 4 | 20 | 24 | +3 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 78 | 5.1 | 18:52 |
| 2013-14 | EDM | 80 | 19 | 37 | 56 | -12 | 26 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 178 | 10.7 | 20:24 |
| 2014-15 | EDM | 76 | 24 | 32 | 56 | -12 | 25 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 189 | 12.7 | 20:38 |
| 2015-16 | EDM | 55 | 12 | 22 | 34 | -9 | 18 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 108 | 11.1 | 19:04 |
| 2016-17 | EDM | 82 | 18 | 25 | 43 | -10 | 29 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 200 | 9.0 | 17:42 |
| 2017-18 | EDM | 62 | 24 | 24 | 48 | +10 | 20 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 151 | 15.9 | 18:05 |
| 2018-19 | EDM | 82 | 28 | 41 | 69 | -13 | 26 | 8 | 1 | 3 | 208 | 13.5 | 20:06 |
| 2019-20 | EDM | 65 | 22 | 39 | 61 | +1 | 33 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 172 | 12.8 | 20:28 |
| 2020-21 | EDM | 52 | 16 | 19 | 35 | -4 | 22 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 135 | 11.8 | 20:46 |
| 2021-22 | EDM | 63 | 11 | 39 | 50 | +3 | 16 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 154 | 7.1 | 19:19 |
| 2022-23 | EDM | 82 | 37 | 67 | 104 | +12 | 35 | 15 | 1 | 3 | 201 | 18.4 | 19:48 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 801 | 233 | 399 | 632 | -33 | 274 | 66 | 7 | 28 | 1908 | 12.2 | 19:26 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
37 goals and 67 assists in all 82 games — 104 points, a career high by 35 — plus-12, 19:48 a night, 201 shots at 18.4 per cent.
His previous best was 69 points, in 2018-19. He is 30 and this was the twelfth season.
53.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 78th percentile, with his ice at 63-50 against an expectation of 51.52-44.70. Twelve goals better than the chances at the offensive end and five worse at the defensive one — the largest finishing surplus on the club, which on a line with McDavid or Draisaitl is not a surprise.
Twelve seasons, 801 games, 632 points, all in Edmonton.
The Finesse Game
201 shots at a median of 23 feet, 40 per cent from inside twenty and 14 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside forty: 169 shots, 37 goals, 21.89 per cent. Beyond forty: 28 shots, two goals.
And the reason to record all of that: the shot measures 82.2 mph, the 5th percentile — one of the softest in the league — and he scored 37 goals with it.
Edmonton’s top three forwards register at the 37th, 32nd and 5th percentiles for shot speed and scored 153 goals between them. There is no clearer demonstration anywhere in this book of what shot velocity does not measure.
15 of his goals came on the power play, on the best unit in the league.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 192. 22.4 mph at the 55th percentile, 1.1 bursts a game at the 59th, 3.05 miles a game at the 82nd — ordinary speed, plenty of ground.
35 penalty minutes in 82 games. He is not physical and never has been at 192 pounds.
What he does is kill penalties, and he has done it for twelve years on a club that has needed the help: Edmonton finished 24th in expected goals against a man short.
The Intangibles
First overall in 2011, twelve years in one city, and a hundred-point season at 30 after a decade of being the reason Edmonton kept finishing last.
He signed an eight-year contract in 2021 that looked generous and now looks like the last piece of a top six.
The caution is the obvious one: 104 points at 18.4 per cent shooting, on the wing of the two best forwards in the league. What survives if the linemate changes is the passing and the penalty killing, and both are twelve years deep.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“What survives if the linemate changes is the passing and the penalty killing, and both are twelve years deep.”
“What he does is kill penalties, and he has done it for twelve years on a club that has needed the help”
“First overall in 2011, twelve years in one city, and a hundred-point season at 30 after a decade of being the reason Edmonton kept finishing last.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,111 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.5%
- 78th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.7%
- 68th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 63 for, 50 against. Expected: 51.5 and 44.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 12 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 62nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.10 a game
- Distance
- 3.05 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 82.2 mph
- 25th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1111 minutes at five-on-five
- Zach Hyman37%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- EDM took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.5% — level with the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,111 minutes at five-on-five — 73rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Darnell Nurse | 49.5% | 56.2% | 53.2% |
| Zach Hyman | 55.9% | 51.7% | 55.0% |
| Cody Ceci | 49.7% | 56.0% | 51.2% |
49.5% together, 56.2% for him apart and 53.2% for Nurse apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
264 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 39 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.